By Your Scars
by Nom de Cle
Summary: Ga'vik snorted, "Don't worry, they rarely bite. Their teeth are mostly dull, like yours." He flashed his own sharp canines playfully at Eikahe, but the tauren was still gazing steadily at the human. ****AU, because I'm not really a stickler for details. M/F Troll/Human when things get rolling. Oh... are you into that sort of thing, too?****
1. 1: Litha is burnt

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

She did not even see the attackers.

She was in the caravan, huddled between crates of trade goods and trying to pretend a sack of root vegetables made a decent pillow, dozing fitfully as the caravan creaked and ground through the hot sand. When she heard the sudden screams and clash of metal, she merely pulled her thin cloak more tightly around herself and sank as deeply as she could between the side of the wagon and the rough burlap sack. She did not even move when the far side of the wagon went up in a sudden roar of flames, just closed her eyes against the brightness and the smoke. She moved her lips in silent prayer and waited for it to be over.

Evidently, the goal of the mysterious brigands was not inside the wagon. After what seemed an age of roaring and crackling, smoke and heat, she realized there were no other sounds, and that no-one had discovered her. Though the caravan itself was mostly of wood, the vegetables did not burn well, and Litha decided the searing heat from the flames did not promise the quick death she'd prayed for.

Slowly at first, then more urgently as she felt her heavy slave collar blistering the soft skin of her throat, she dragged herself out of the flaming wreck. She burned herself badly, twice: once, thoughtlessly grasping the steel rim around the edge of a barrel (which resulted in a bitten-off cry of pain), and again when her cloak caught fire and she was forced to fling herself bodily out of the caravan and roll in the sand. Afterward, she lay trembling for a moment with her face pressed to the ground, listening for the inevitable shout of alarm that would signal she'd been revealed. She hoped they would kill her swiftly. Her throat, right hand, and the whole length of her left leg blazed in agony.

When no shout came, her survival instincts coaxed her to move once more. She lifted her face first to take in her surroundings. Goblin bodies and... parts of bodies were strewn about. One of the kodos lay dead, still in its harness, the others fled or stolen. She saw no movement but the flames licking over the burning wagon.

Litha felt no sadness at the death of the goblins - her slavers, tormentors, and rapists - but no pleasure either. Now she was alone, somewhere in Tanaris, badly injured and barefoot, wearing only a thin linen shift and magic-suppressing slave collar that rendered her helpless.

Her first instinct was to move away from the wreckage and corpses. Thick black smoke billowed from the caravan, and it was still only mid-afternoon. The smoke would be visible from a great distance, and Litha had no idea if a Horde camp or village might be just over the horizon. She managed to half crawl, half drag herself to a small outcrop of rocks, and huddled in the shade, hissing through her teeth at the renewed pain from her burns.

She waited.

The caravan burned through the evening and into the night. When it was dark, Litha lapsed into brief periods of dreamless sleep - or more accurately, drifted in and out of consciousness. She awoke slowly to a cacophony of buzzing, and was surprised to see the sun had risen above the horizon already. The fire had died, leaving only a skeleton of charred supports still raised at one end on two wheels. With the smoke dissipating, the corpse-flies had arrived.

Litha's throat was raw inside and out, and her tongue felt thick and dry in her mouth, like a piece of wood. The slight movement required to sit up made her cough, and the skin on her left thigh cracked open and bled. She scanned the horizon - saw nothing but rocks, sand, and the hazy outline of mountains in the distance - and turned to scan the wreckage site.

She would need to look for water.

After what seemed like hours of agonized crawling from corpse to corpse, flapping her good hand helplessly at the agitated flies to keep them off of her face and wounds, she had managed to make a small pile of water skins near the wagon. She sat in the dirt and alternately sipped and drizzled the water over the blistered, oozing skin of her leg. The outcrop she had spent the night under turned out to be some sort of immense skeleton, and besides, appeared impossibly far away now. Baking under midday sun, with a wall of flies and the stench of slowly bloating corpses surrounding her, Litha felt spent. She decided to rest in the shade of the raised end of the wagon before moving on.

On the second day, she spent most of her time sipping and drizzling the water on herself until it was nearly gone, before realizing the enormity of her extravagance. Parched as she was, she resolved to save the remainder for dripping onto her injured leg at intervals. She watched the progress of the sun in the sky impatiently, waiting until she felt it had been an hour, or until she could bear the pain no more, before allowing herself the cooling respite of a few drops of liquid on her charred flesh.

Partway through the third day, she ran out of water. She lay still most of the day in the dirt under the burnt wagon, too exhausted and dehydrated to weep, hoping the whole thing would collapse on her and end her suffering. When the hyenas arrived at dusk, though, she found herself once again unable to embrace the end fearlessly. Silently cursing her own weakness, she sank into the shadows behind one charred wheel, hidden in ash and soot. She listened to the wet sound of the goblins and kodo being eviscerated and eaten by the hyenas, and decided she was right to avoid this death, as well.

Near daybreak, the disgusting sound of feasting predators stopped abruptly. She thought she heard the rumbling growl of a larger predator approaching - and her stomach turned over as the sound resolved itself into the staccato cadence of Orcish. One of the hyenas dropped abruptly with the soft _zip_ and _thuck_ of a well-placed arrow. The rest scattered, yipping and snarling, tails tucked.

Litha, already crouched as small and deep in the shadows as she could manage with her injured leg, closed her eyes and concentrated on silent, shallow breaths. From the sounds of it, there were at least a dozen of them, stomping noisily around the wreckage or riding on snuffling beasts, kicking goblin bodies over, poking at the debris with their spears and axes, and grunting at each other. She had been exposed to Orcish during her time with the goblins, but she understood very little. She was sure only of the words "goblin," "caravan," and "Gadgetzan."

_Maybe Gadgetzan is nearby_, she thought to herself. _Fat lot of good that does me._

After a mercifully brief inspection of the wreckage, she heard the Horde party starting to move on. Voices became more distant and their shuffling footsteps moved off in the same direction the caravan had been heading. Litha, realizing she had been holding her breath, allowed herself a small sigh of relief.


	2. 2: Ga'vik is swayed

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

As they moved away from the wreckage, Ga'vik's sensitive ears pricked at a soft sound from the direction of the burnt wagon, and then his nostrils flared as he caught a whiff of something distinctly non-goblin. After a moment's hesitation, his inquisitive nature got the better of him, and he wheeled his raptor around and dismounted lightly. Eikahe was trailing behind on foot, and joined him as he returned to stand beside the charred rubble.

"Did you hear something?" Eikahe rumbled in Taur-ahe. He glanced toward the rest of their party, trudging sluggishly away from them. The orcs on mounts moved slowly to keep pace with those on foot.

Ga'vik ruffled his spiky hair front to back, back to front, and clicked his teeth in thought. It had not taken him long to determine that the inside of the wagon contained nothing that would produce sound - not even another fly-ridden corpse.

"I thought I did," he replied in the same tongue. He knew that Eikahe appreciated when he spoke Taur-ahe, and it came more easily to him than the Orcish they spoke amidst their party.

Ga'vik's pet, Lujin, prowled slowly toward him and sniffed delicately at the nearest wheel of the cart, before sitting on her haunches and showing sudden interest in a meticulous groom of her tail.

Clicking his teeth again, Ga'vik considered the wreck. Abruptly, he dropped into a low crouch, pressing his hands into the dirt and bringing his chest level with the ground to peer under the wreckage. There was a small hissing sound that reminded Ga'vik of a startled kitten, and then he found himself staring directly into wide, white-rimmed eyes. They were a blend of colours that the troll appreciated: green and brown with flecks of gold, like a forest. As Ga'vik waited, the blackness around the eyes slowly resolved itself into a crouched figure, camouflaged with soot.

Eikahe had also crouched low to peer into the blackness, though he'd had to lie laboriously on his stomach to bring his broad hairy face close to Ga'vik's. His heavy tauren build did not allow the frog-like position that the lithe troll crouched in.

"It's a human calf!" Eikahe rumbled in surprise. He glanced again at Ga'vik, who merely grunted and sat back on his heels, curiosity sated.

Eikahe pressed himself further into the dirt, staring into the hazel eyes for a long moment, before reaching slowly into the darkness and grasping the human by its shoulder. He drew it, unresisting, into the light, and looked it over. The human trembled and stayed huddled on the ground, head downcast.

It was filthy from head to toe, smeared with soot and ash. Blood and serum wept from a badly burnt leg, and one hand was tucked protectively against its chest. It wore only a blackened slave collar around its neck, and a short sack-like garb that was badly charred around the bottom edge. Its hair was burnt as well, and stuck to its head in greasy, blackened strands at about chin-length. Ga'vik reached out to rub a strand between his fingers, finding it was actually a light golden brown colour under the ash, and much finer than his own.

"Careful, he's badly injured, and might bite. Are there others?" Eikahe glanced around edgily, as if expecting hidden humans to emerge from the shadows, but the only movement was the lazy dance of the corpse-flies and the dusty progress of the orcs.

Ga'vik snorted. "You've been celibate for far too long, my friend. It's not a he. Or a calf." He leaned down and inhaled deeply, the more primitive parts of his brain confirming this was indeed a female of breeding age, despite the overwhelming stench of char and blood and death.

"Are you sure? It's so small, and... small." Eikahe frowned doubtfully. He took in the tiny creature, comparing it mentally to a Tauren female's voluptuous shape. He inhaled noisily himself, then made a choking sound and released the air again with a bullish snort.

Ga'vik grasped the human by the upper arm and pulled her easily to her feet. Once she was standing, her feminine shape was more obvious, despite her slight build. The thin garment she wore revealed faint curves at the hips and chest. She was small - much smaller than he and Eikahe - and skinnier, he thought, than other humans he had seen, though he had never had the luxury or urge to inspect them so closely. Still, her thin build belied her surprisingly long legs, and he decided her height was adult-human-ish. She came roughly up to the middle of his chest.

"What do you think, Lu?" The sleek, black panther had crept closer to twitch her whiskers delicately at the creature, and turned to Ga'vik now with wide golden eyes. Her expression was one of open disgust. She was disdainful of most everyone she met, but the human's filthiness seemed particularly abhorrent to her.

Ga'vik turned and spat in the dirt. "I know, it already smells half-dead. Shall I put it out of its misery?" When Eikahe only frowned, Ga'vik continued forcefully, "Best to leave it here in peace, then. Come." He released his grip abruptly and started to move toward their mounts, gesturing for Eikahe to follow.

"Do you think she'll live?" Eikahe called to his friend, without taking his eyes off the female. She swayed slightly and he reached out carefully to grasp her shoulder again, holding her steady.

"No," the troll answered immediately. Then, turning back to look at his friend, he added more gently, "It's badly injured, too far gone. Burns are bad. The desert will claim it soon."

When Eikahe made no response, Ga'vik scowled and ran his hand through his hair. The large tauren was as soft-hearted as he was stubborn, and his silence spoke volumes.

Ga'vik tried again. "I shouldn't need to say this, Eik, but it's a loa-damned _human_. I know it looks like a calf, but it's not. _She's_ full-grown, and _she's_ Alliance. It would be fucking _treason_ to help her."

Eikahe looked back at him with his big sad cow eyes. "She doesn't look like a fearsome Alliance soldier to me," he said, his deep voice low and persuasive.

The troll trudged back over to him with a huff. He leaned forward, lightly brushing some debris off of her slave collar to reveal the faintly glowing runes underneath. "_She_ may not be very big, but she's got magic of some kind, or they wouldn't bother with one of these loa-damned things to suppress it." He rubbed at the collar again to reveal more runes. As he did so, the metal band dropped an inch down her neck, taking a piece of blistered skin with it. The human jerked in Eikahe's hand, and the burly tauren jumped back in surprise, letting her crumple to the ground.

Ga'vik snorted, "Don't worry, they rarely bite. Their teeth are mostly dull, like yours." He flashed his own sharp canines playfully at Eikahe, but the tauren was still gazing steadily at the human. She was quaking now, and staring up at them with her disconcerting forest-coloured eyes, the whites nearly glowing against her blackened face.

"Do you think we can take the collar off? Maybe she can heal herself."

"That's a great idea. She can heal herself, and then kill us both!"

"I don't think she's in any state."

"For all we know, she's the most powerful human mage in the whole fucking Alliance."

"You're so dramatic. Look at her. She's a slave hiding under a burnt turnip cart in the middle of the desert, not a prisoner in a high-security dungeon."

"We can't take the collar off. Not without removing her head first. Probably nobody can, but the mage who sealed it. For all we know, she'd rather die than live like that, wearing that loa-damned thing, with no magic or powers."

"If she wanted to die, she wouldn't have tried to stay hidden."

Ga'vik sighed. He was not opposed to mercy. As a hunter, he killed out of necessity: to eat, to clothe himself, to earn a living. As a solider, he killed those who would otherwise kill him. He was not a sadist, and would prefer not to leave her here, to die of thirst. Still, he felt obligated to offer a token resistance, dancing about the subject until it seemed the only reasonable option, for his own sake as well as for Eikahe's. They were each in enough trouble with their superiors as it was.

"You probably won't be able to heal her. The collar suppresses all magic. Burns are nasty things," he reiterated, ruffling his hair again, already considering logistics.

"I appreciate your faith in my abilities." Despite the sarcastic words, Eikahe's voice held a definite note of gratitude as he patted the troll's shoulder with a large, hairy hand. He already knew he'd won.

"Gurk will probably kill her as soon as we get to camp," Ga'vik continued, pulling out his own water skin and crouching to hold it to her lips. The human didn't hesitate, but brought one fluttering hand up to grasp it as she drank greedily. The troll allowed her several gulps, then drew it slowly away before she made herself ill. She gazed straight at him, licking the last drops from her cracked lips with a small, pink tongue.

Then she fainted into his arms.


	3. 3: Litha is remarkably calm

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

The lines between consciousness and unconsciousness seemed increasingly blurred, and Litha drifted gratefully between them. She had learned to live with uncertainty and fear during her time with the goblins, and her emotions tended to veer wildly between anger and acceptance, but apathy was new to her. It was relaxing.

She knew the apathy wasn't entirely her own. The tauren, a looming black beast that stunk of cow dung, had _healed_ her, at least somewhat, and then poured a potion into her mouth that deadened the pain, as well as all other sensation.

She was vaguely aware of being with the troll, because he smelled of something more foreign than cow dung; something sharp but not unpleasant. It reminded her of the smell of elves, in a way, but earthier. _Like the woods after a rain. But sweaty._

She was being bounced and jostled against him as they moved, and she knew that the movement was causing her blistered leg to ooze and hurt, but though the pain was there, it came to her quite neutrally. She observed it as one might observe the difference between two shades of beige. It did not _feel_ to feel, right now.

Occasionally she was aware of the press of a water skin against her lips, and she drank obediently. She thought she felt the pressure of the troll's gaze, as well, but it did not bother her, and she did not open her eyes to it. She was riding child-like in his lap, her legs draped limply to either side of his hips, and she felt the impression of chain mail making a pattern on her cheek, the rhythmic movement of a hard, flat chest beneath it. A heavy leather-clad arm was bracing her there, a thin cloak draped loosely to keep the sun from her face. He spoke sometimes, his voice low and rough, but she did not think he was speaking to _her_.

After what seemed a long time, she noticed that they were no longer moving. In fact, she was lying down, on a bedroll, under a tarp. She could still sense the troll, and when she shifted, her foot bumped against a hard shape beside her. She turned and saw the troll sleeping next to her. He was stretched on his back on the bare earth, an arm draped across his eyes. He had taken off most of his armour and slept only in leather trousers. Although he was slim compared to the orcs and the tauren, his heavily muscled shoulders were twice as broad as her own. His lean chest gleamed in a pale mint green, with a tuft of black hair in the middle, and a more noticeable line running from his navel down. It had never occurred to Litha that trolls would have belly buttons, and she found it oddly... humanizing.

Glancing down at herself, she saw her injured leg and hand were wrapped snugly in herb-scented bandages, and when she brought a hand to her throat, she felt bandaging there as well, twining under and over the metal collar. The suppressive power of the runic collar must have prevented the tauren from healing her wounds entirely, though it was not actually designed to prevent magic from being done _to_ her. He was using the potions and salves to try and bridge the gap.

Outside, the glaring sunlight caused the ground to shimmer and blur... or maybe it was still the effects of the potion. She could make out a few burly figures shuffling back and forth, tending the camp, punctuated by Orcish grunts and mutters. As she watched, they drifted off into other simple tents or out of her field of vision until the camp was still. The party must have stopped to avoid traveling in the baking mid-day sun.

Her head still felt woolly, but her wounds were beginning to throb painfully, as was her bladder. She could not remember when she had urinated last, and now that she thought of it, she could think of nothing else. She waited as long as she could, listening for any further sounds of movement in the camp, until she thought she would burst. Then, slowly, she levered herself into a sitting position.

When she crept out from under the tarp, she looked about again for anyone left awake, but decided any lookouts must be outside the ring of tents. Nearby, the immense hairy black shape of the tauren was unmistakable, taking up the whole space under another tarp and even sticking out slightly.

With great effort, she managed to drag herself upright just outside the tent, but knew immediately that she couldn't go further. The pain was growing more intense by the minute, and her head was spinning from the effort of getting this far. After one last, helpless glance around the campsite, she dropped into a squat, her shift dress hiked to her hips, and simply peed in the dirt in the bright sunlight. The pain from bending her burnt leg was almost worth the relief she felt.

When she tugged her shift back down and glanced toward the tent, she was shocked to see the troll propped on one elbow, watching her. His eyes were a dark cobalt blue - the colour of the deep sea. They were startling on his scarred green face, tusks curving menacingly from the corners of his lips. She was not used to reading the expressions of trolls, but she thought his look was... a question. When he started to rise, she stopped him with a short shake of her head. She had pride. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself back into a standing position and _walked_ (staggered) the few steps back to the bed roll before collapsing.

When he offered her the numbing potion again, she accepted.

Days or years may have passed. Litha wasn't sure, or sure that she cared. She existed in a series of repeating moments: the dusty, noisy times when she lay dozing against his chest as they traveled under the stars or early morning light, the baking hot afternoons when she would find herself on his bedroll under the tarp, the boisterous sound of singing and laughing in Orcish, the quiet rumble of the troll's voice when he spoke, the surprisingly delicate furry touch of the tauren, a wide black face with brown eyes, a whiskered black face with golden eyes, a tusked green face with blue eyes.

Sometimes she would flit into consciousness when the troll or the tauren would pour some water, potion, or broth into her mouth, and once she woke with a cry when they were changing her bandages. The tauren moved hastily to give her more potion, and for once she pushed it away, trying to sit up and see the wound for herself.

Her hand was healed now with puckered scar tissue stretching tightly across her palm, and they no longer wound bandages around her neck. The wound on her leg had contracted as well, but a jagged red and yellow crater still ran from her hip to her knee, and the bandage had stuck to it as the tauren tried to peel it away. It smelled of rot. Litha prodded it experimentally, and a spike of pain shot up her leg. She looked up at the troll and the tauren, who were looming over her. They both looked grim. She thought perhaps that was their usual expression.

"When... will I die?" asked Litha, finding her tongue thick and slow. Then she tried in her meager Orcish, "Die?" She looked pleadingly at the tauren. His horns were intimidating, but his large brown eyes seemed honest.

"N... no," said the tauren, and rambled on in Orcish for a little while, of which Litha could only pick out "die" again, and then "fix" and "try."

That wasn't helpful; she already knew they were trying to heal her. She wanted to know why. _What did they plan to do with her?_ Her knowledge of the Horde suggested they would most likely rape, kill, and then eat her. She wondered how much longer they would try to heal her before that would happen. She hoped she would still be given the numbing potion. In the next instant, she vowed to stop taking it. She licked her lips and felt consciousness slipping away.

Desperately, she turned to the troll.

He was scowling, lower lip jutting upward between his tusks. As she stared at him, he ruffled his hair with one hand and clicked his teeth. He looked furious.

"Why are you healing me?" she gasped, racking her brain for a useful Orcish word. It was hard to think. Whenever the potion wore off, she felt too cold and too hot at the same time. _Feverish_. "What do you want with me?" Then, blackness crowded her vision and she let it take her.


	4. 4: Eikahe is well-intentioned

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

Eikahe drizzled some more of the pain-relieving potion into human's unconscious mouth and sat back to look at Ga'vik. His friend was running his hand through his hair and clicking his teeth the way he did when he was agitated, or thinking hard. It was no surprise the troll's thick black hair was always standing on end. He seemed to constantly find himself in - or possibly seek - situations that warranted agitation and hard thinking. Eikahe had been a peaceful, contemplative druid until the troublesome Ga'vik had whirled into his life. _Look at me now! Causing my own trouble, and dragging _Ga'vik_ into it, for once_.

The day before yesterday, he'd even bathed the human. She'd been unconscious, and he'd tried to leave her some dignity by shifting her loose dress up as he washed her lower half, then shifting it down as he washed the top. They'd had her for nearly a week already at that point, and he had been worried that her filthy state was contributing to the relentless infection in her leg. Ga'vik had disagreed, insisting that humans never washed, and had ruffled his hair worriedly the whole time. When Eikahe had finished revealing ivory, pink, and freckle-spattered skin, and covered her with Ga'vik's light cloak so he could wash her single item of clothing, Ga'vik had stood staring at her for a long time. Then his nostrils had flared as he inhaled deeply to take in her smell, and Eikahe had understood his concern at last.

The orcs had noticed the difference as well.

Several of them had taken a renewed interest in the captive, and tension in the party had been growing since then. Eikahe could hear angry Orcish mutterings from the far side of the camp even now.

"Well, we could try dirtying her up again," Eikahe said to his friend in Taur-ahe, gazing sadly at the unconscious human. She'd had many other injuries, beyond the burns: bruises and delicate wounds that told of a variety of cruelties at the hands of the goblins. He hated to think he'd healed her only to let her be subjected to more of the same, at the hands of the orcs. In fact, Eikahe suspected their _hands_ would be the least of it.

Ga'vik only grunted, ducked backward out of the tent and ambled toward the cooking fire. Gurk, the largest orc and the leader of the party, stepped suddenly in his path. As usual with Gurk, there was little preamble.

"Troll, you say the human _slave_ will help us find who attacks the caravans. You say she will help us complete the mission. I say she is dying, and she doesn't even speak Orcish. Let me have her." Gurk peppered his speech with dramatic axe-wielding Orcish gestures, several of which nearly took off Ga'vik's head. Ga'vik didn't flinch, but hunched slightly lower into his habitual slouch.

"Gurk," said Ga'vik slowly, rumpling his hair, "I toldja. She need more time to heal, mon. Eik do great work, but dat collar isn't helpin." His Orcish was more heavily accented than his Taur-ahe. He glanced back at Eikahe, who came to stand beside him, but did not speak. The orcs had a modicum of respect for the troll, who was, at least, a lethal warrior like them. They had little or none for Eikahe, who was practically a pacifist. His support would not sway them.

"You will turn her over to me, now. You cannot keep her for yourself. We are supposed to share any spoils we find." At this, Gurk turned to leer suggestively in the direction of the tent, much to the raucous delight of the other orcs.

"Why you need a half-dead human to fuck, mon? Don't da orc ladies wantcha?" Ga'vik's tone was light, but he repositioned himself between Gurk and the tent. At the same time, a shadow stealthily detached itself from the tent and edged around to flank the big orc, pupils dilating in wide golden eyes.

"Har, har," spat Gurk. "You think you are so funny, troll. You make fun of us orcs. You think we are stupid, because we don't laugh at your jokes. Did your tribe turn you out because of your un-funny jokes, or your love of humans?"

"Below da belt, mon," muttered Ga'vik, rolling his shoulders. He flicked his eyes at Lujin and gave a sharp whistle. She slunk back to the tent, tail flicking angrily. She was not one for diplomacy.

The troll rumpled his hair, clicked his teeth, and tried one more time. "We find somebody dat speak Common, den we get some answers..."

"Enough!" roared Gurk, lifting an axe with each hand.

Ga'vik was primarily a ranged fighter, but it was not because he lacked skills in hand-to-hand combat. Even as Gurk had raised his heavy double-edged axes, the troll was moving swiftly forward to press his skinning knife against the soft hide of the orc's neck.

"I know you a big orc, mon, and you like to look da big orc wit your big fuckin' axes. You feel big right now?" He pressed the blade further, causing blood to well up. "You tink I's just a nobody troll with no tribe, and nobody fuckin' care if you kill me, yah?" At the edge of camp, Jozala, the troll's red raptor, screamed as if in protest. Lujin's golden eyes glowed from the shade beside the tent. "Let me tell ya, Gurk. I didn' get kicked out 'cause I was bad at da killin' part. Just de obeyin' orders part."

Ga'vik stepped back abruptly, and sheathed the knife at his hip. Gurk's axe-bearing arms had already both dropped to his sides. He regarded the troll through slitted eyes a moment longer, before spinning on his heel to stalk out of the camp. The other orcs shuffled restlessly around the camp, but made no move to intervene. They respected authority, but authority came with strength and in this instance, Gurk had been bested.

As the other orcs prepared their meals and slipped under their tents, Ga'vik stood inert, with no hair-rumpling or teeth-clicking to betray agitation. Eikahe knew it meant the troll was battling far more powerful emotions. After several minutes of deathly stillness, Ga'vik ruffled his hair several times in quick succession, then headed outside of the circle of tents to tend to his mount. Jozala screeched a greeting to him and ducked her head as he scratched at her long muzzle and spoke in soft Zandali.

Hesitantly, Eikahe approached and addressed him in Taur-ahe. "Well, that's that... ?"

Ga'vik only snorted in response and began to curry the raptor's scales to remove the sand that had worked its way between them. Jozala crooned and bumped her head against his until he batted it away. Eikahe patted her reflexively when she turned toward him. He missed his own mount, but kodos didn't last long in the desert without any vegetation to eat, so only the carnivorous raptor and three worgs accompanied them on their mission.

The tauren cleared his throat and spoke again. "Now that Gurk's given up on that idea..."

"You think he's given up?" Ga'vik rounded on him, his blue eyes sparking. "If they don't attack us tonight, it'll be tomorrow, or the next day. And don't think they'll spare you just because you're the only healer." He bared his teeth angrily and turned back to the raptor. "And what they do to her will be worse than what they do to us." Snarling, he tossed the brush down to drag both hands through his hair, and turned back to the tauren again. "Best case scenario, the next week is uneventful and we make it back to Gadgetzan. Maybe she knows something about the attacks, maybe she doesn't. Regardless, she's back in goblin hands, getting beaten and raped by those rich little cretins. I'm so fucking glad we saved her life." The last was said with such venom that Jozala crept backward, tucking her talons against her chest and chirping nervously.

Clucking impatiently at her, Ga'vik picked up the brush again and groomed her furiously. "It would have been kinder," he hissed, "to kill her when we found her."

Eikahe sat heavily on the sand and gazed back into the camp. Through the bright mid-day sun, he could see Lujin's golden eyes watching them from beside the tent. Within the tent, the human female was just a shaded lump.

"If you think that's true," the tauren said, working it out slowly, "you can just kill her now. Tell Gurk she knew nothing, so you ended it. She won't even feel it." He watched his friend as he spoke, and the troll's brush-strokes slowed and then stopped. After a moment he sat down beside the tauren, sighing.

"It's like you said, Eik. She wants to live. I see it every time she takes a sip of water, or drags herself out of the tent to take a piss. Despite everything she's been through, she just keeps going. It's a choice she's made, and I can't take that away from her."

"She's pretty, too."

Ga'vik snorted. "I wasn't sure you'd noticed. Everyone else sure did."

"I may be celibate, and of the wrong species, but I'm not blind. I only need to see the way you look at her." That seemed to irritate the troll, causing him to jump to his feet and resume grooming the raptor with rough strokes.

"It doesn't help that you make me carry her all the time, and _sleep_ next to her."

Eikahe huffed. "You _offered_ to carry her, since you have a mount. And we both know there's no room for her in my tent. We can hardly leave her out in the sun all day, to burn the rest of her pretty pink skin off."

Ga'vik only kicked sand at him, having no retort, and bent to his work in silence.


	5. 5: Litha knows very little Orcish

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

She woke again to the feel of warm chain mail pressed against her face. For a while she simply relished the pleasant contrast of the cool night air on one cheek, and body heat on the other. As the haziness in her mind ebbed away, she slowly realized _how_ pleasant it was - she felt neither too hot, nor too cold for once. Her fever must have broken.

She opened her eyes to look past the leather-clad arm that held her in place. At first, she thought she was looking at a meteor shower, until she realized the stars were quite still, but her head was still swimming. She lifted a hand to press to her temple, and felt rather than heard the troll grunt in surprise. He spoke, and the lower half of the starry scene was obscured suddenly by a furry black face. The tauren rumbled something as well, and brought a familiar vial up toward her. She shook her head and twisted away, trying to sit up. The troll's arm held her pinned. After a brief struggle, he loosened his grip enough that she could look around herself.

She was riding on a raptor. She should not have been shocked, but she was. As if sharing in her astonishment, the beast suddenly canted its massive head back to regard her with one black, beady eye. It made a soft, bird-like noise. At a sharp word from the troll, it straightened again to face in the direction they were moving.

Ahead, a dozen orcs plodded on foot, and several more rode shaggy grey worgs. The group was shambling through the sand dunes (_Still Tanaris_, she decided), and making slow progress. Off to her right, she could make out a gleaming white shape in the darkness - another huge skeleton like the one she had sheltered under after the attack. Litha caught a glimpse of a black feline shape darting amongst the oversized ribs, following the party at a distance. To her left, the tauren was walking beside the raptor, looking up at her keenly. When he caught her eye, he offered her the potion again.

Her leg ached, and she was acutely aware of the way the bandages shifted and pulled with each step the raptor took, but the pain was infinitely less than it had been. She shook her head at him, and he carefully tucked the vial back into a leather bag on his hip. The tauren and the troll exchanged words in a harsh language she didn't think was Orcish. Feeling more clear-headed than last time she'd spoken to them, she decided on the simplest question.

"Do either of you speak Common?"

She turned to look up at the troll, but he was staring straight ahead, all scowls and angrily curved tusks. She felt him tugging on the reins, and when she followed his gaze, she realized he'd slowed the raptor to drop back further behind the orcs. When she looked down at the tauren, his brown, wide-set cow eyes made her wonder that he spoke any language at all. He spoke now, though, and she was able to catch, "...Orcish?"

"Orcish..." she said, racking her brain, "...little." Not that they wouldn't be able to tell her knowledge of the language was limited.

The tauren's mouth turned up at the corners, in a way that was neither menacing, nor particularly pleasant. She was not sure if taurens smiled.

"Eikahe," he said, and pointed to himself, then pointed to her and asked in Orcish, "You?"

"Litha," she replied. When the goblins had initially taken her into slavery, she'd tried to withhold her name, thinking it would give them some sort of power over her. She'd been wrong, of course. The collar and the chains had given them all the power they needed. She'd relinquished her name after only a few days, but the obstinacy had cost her greatly.

"Lit... ha. Lidda. Li... ssa." He rolled the word around in his wide mouth, nodding thoughtfully.

When she looked up at the troll, he also seemed to be mouthing her name, but made no sound.

"Ga'vik," said Eikahe. When Litha looked back at him, he was gesturing up to the troll. "Ga'vik," he repeated, encouragingly. The troll shifted in the saddle and finally met her eyes when she turned to look at him again.

"Ga'vik," she repeated easily. He looked away abruptly, clicking his teeth together. It made the muscles of his jaw line jump.

Litha looked down at the tauren and asked in Common, "What now, Eikahe?" She spread her hands, palms opening upward in a questioning gesture. The tauren nodded gravely at her for a moment, before casting his arm in a wide arc, as if to encompass all that was behind them, above them, and ahead.

He seemed to say, "All of this." Litha started to nod her head back at him, not exactly comprehending, but trying to look equally solemn, when the troll cut in sharply.

"Gadgetzan," he said curtly, and gestured in the direction they were headed.

Litha felt her stomach drop out. _Back to the goblins, then._ She thought maybe she should feel relieved - the goblins were not likely to kill her, and they definitely did not _eat_ humans. Everything she'd ever learned indicated that her fate with the Horde would be far worse than what the goblins could dish out.

Still, Eikahe and Ga'vik had done nothing but mend her wounds and ease her pain. They'd been ferrying her about quite gently. It seemed almost a betrayal that they would turn her over to her slavers after that.

Had she been hoping for something else? Maybe, but Litha let the feeling pass without lapsing into despair. A year ago, she had felt nothing _but_ hope and despair. She had imagined that she would surely be rescued. The expectation had driven her survival every day, and her crushing disappointment every night. Later, when she contemplated a life of living with what had been done to her, she preferred to imagine that she would die an honest martyr's death (and her friends and family would rage and weep, and seek vengeance, and possibly slaughter all goblins everywhere). Then she had feared that she would _not_ die, which was worse.

Now, Litha _knew_ she would not die. The world had yet to starve her to death, to beat or rape her to death. The world had failed to burn her alive, and had spared her a grave in the belly of a hyena. She accepted that her fate was to live, and she vowed to do it with as much dignity as she could muster.

Leaning her head back against the troll's chest, she listened for a while as he and the tauren spoke to each other, in that low rough tongue that was not Orcish. She turned her face to the stars, watching them twirl slowly overhead as the night passed, until she dozed again.


	6. 6: Ga'vik stays focused

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

The little human was unflappable; he had to give her that.

With her wide forest-coloured eyes, the smattering of freckles across her pert little nose, and her pink bowed lips, her appearance reminded him more of a delicate blood elf than the stinking, stubby humans he'd met in battle. The blood elves were a volatile and narcissistic race, but this human sat calmly astride his lap, accepting sips from his water skin even after he'd told her they were returning her to slavery. She seemed to accept the situation as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

She'd fallen asleep, now. She was curled limply against his chest, her tiny pink fingers twitching and flexing in a dream. The runes of her slave-collar glimmered and flickered, as if her magic flexed in her dreams as well.

_What did humans dream of, anyway? _Was she a simple civilian, bustling about in a stone castle, shoulder-to-shoulder with others of her kind, little humanlings dashing over the cobbles at her feet, some burly male at her side?

Or was she a warrior, reliving past battles lost and won, as he did?

Eikahe had carefully braided her singed hair, one short piece on either side, to keep it off her face in the tauren tradition. One of the plaits flopped across her eyes now, and Ga'vik tucked it carefully back behind her pink shell ear before wrapping his thin desert cloak more securely around her. Her eyelids fluttered as she squirmed and then settled against him, sighing.

He stared at her a while longer before realizing that the spreading heat in his lower belly was taking on a more _solid_ shape. Worse, he could feel Eikahe's amused brown eyes on him. His tusks felt suddenly hot and he snapped his teeth together to relieve the sensation. Eikahe was convinced that Ga'vik was attracted to the little human with the irritatingly unpronounceable name. It was true, of course, but there was no need for the tauren to be so smug about it.

"You look uncomfortable, my friend," Eikahe said now, his broad face as solemn as ever. "Do you want me to carry Lissa for a while? Does she grow heavy?"

"She is getting heavier," snapped Ga'vik, though she was still light enough that it made little difference to him or to Jozala. The goblins must have fed her dreadfully little, if she filled out on the meagre diet of broth and potions they'd been able to get into her.

Eikahe held up two broad furry hands, but Ga'vik only huffed and edged Jozala away from him.

"Leave off. I'm fine."

Eikahe let his hands drop. "I think she's out of the woods, now, though there's nothing I can do about the scars." Besides her puckered right palm and the thin pink ridge around her neck, over half of her left leg was a whorl of irregular, shiny pink tissue. They only bandaged the middle section of her thigh, now, where the infection had taken hold and lingered for days. Ga'vik thought she felt cooler than she had before, and she looked peaceful as she slept.

"By your scars, the loas will know you," Ga'vik said. It was a troll proverb. He himself carried many scars. Some were tribal markings; others simply battle wounds that had been left to heal on their own.

"...and know that your healer isn't very good." Eikahe replied with a frown.

Dawn was approaching, and Ga'vik could see the sand dunes beginning to glow in the distance as the sun hit them. They were only three or four more days from Gadgetzan, even at the slow pace they kept. The party meandered this way and that across the Tanaris wastes, the lack of a road slowing their progress even more than the shifting sand. Tacking north-northeast and then east-northeast, they had hoped to cast a wide net over the unmarked route from Un'Goro. They had found three more sacked caravans, but no more survivors, and no hint of their quarry. In every instance, the bodies were already mangled or picked clean by scavengers, any evidence of their killers destroyed. No enemy weapons or bodies had been discovered, unless the attackers were goblins as well. They had left the corpses and burnt wagons to be buried by the dunes. It wouldn't take long.

"Do you think she knows who attacked them?" the troll mused, turning again to his tauren friend.

"Lissa?" Eikahe, like Ga'vik, could only lisp over the unfamiliar "th" sound, but he insisted on trying to say it all the same. "If she does, I'm sure the goblins will be grateful to hear it. The route from Un'Goro to Gadgetzan is rapidly becoming impassable, and they're losing gold every day."

"Grateful, sure," Ga'vik grunted. He did not think this was an emotion the goblins were capable of. Although technically they were neutral, fleecing Alliance and Horde alike, Ga'vik felt it was _more_ true that they were on the _war's_ side. The war, after all, was a profitable endeavour. By aiding both sides, the goblins kept the heads rolling, and the gold flowing. Even now, he and the rest of the Horde party were charged with finding (and preferably, executing) the culprits behind the caravan attacks. When the mission was completed, the goblins would be donating a small army's worth of rations and steel weapons to their cause. On paper, he, Eikahe, and the orcs had "volunteered" to help in exchange for "friendship and goodwill." He did not know if the goblins would hand over the "friendship and goodwill" so readily when their party returned empty-handed.

_Empty-handed but for her, of course_. The loas only knew what she was worth to the goblins. They didn't keep many slaves anymore, so she might be worth a great deal. Obviously, the Alliance frowned on the practice, though the goblins were always able to produce copious documentation indicating the "indentured workers" had signed themselves away.

There were Horde individuals in servitude, as well, and Ga'vik had seen a similar magic-suppression slave collar on a troll, once. At the time, he'd been scornful. What kind of troll would turn his back on his tribe, and sell his services off to others? Ga'vik felt more forgiving, now. His own life-changing decisions were nothing to crow about.

"When we set up camp, you should give the human some more of that potion to keep her quiet."

"I will, if she wants it," Eikahe said, in a mulish tone. Taurens were all stubborn, but Eikahe was downright obstinate when he wanted to be.

"I'm serious, Eik," Ga'vik ground out, "If Gurk notices that she's lively enough to fight back, he'll be even more interested."

Eikahe only harrumphed and walked on in silence.

The human was still asleep when they stopped to make camp at mid-morning. Ga'vik started to lift and pass her down to Eikahe, as he usually did, when she stirred and began to squirm. Reluctantly, he shifted his grip so he could set her down on her feet. She swayed only slightly, favouring her injured leg, before straightening and turning to survey the camp.

The rest of the party had already begun to set up their simple tents, and Ga'vik watched them watching her. When she had turned fully away from him, he peeled his lips back to show the orcs his canines in warning. He hadn't realized he'd growled as well, until Litha spun back to look at him. He deliberately relaxed his face into a nonchalant expression, glancing casually in the tauren's direction.

Eikahe had dumped his pack out and begun to lay out his tarp. They were all anxious to get into the shade before the sun reached its zenith.

"Keep her here with you," Ga'vik said firmly. After several gesticulated attempts between them, they managed to convince the human to sit in the sand by the tauren, on the far side of his tent from the rest of the camp. Ga'vik took Jozala over to the other mounts to unsaddle and groom her, glaring fiercely at several orcs along the way.

"The human girl is getting better," said Umog, Gurk's second in command. She was female, and Ga'vik did not think she posed any threat to the human beyond a quick death. He did not want the news of Litha's recovery to spread, though.

"Eikahe says, dat's a bad sign – infection so bad she don't feel it no more. She prob'ly contagious," he added, for good measure.

Umog followed his gaze toward Gurk, but only grunted in a neutral way. She was not stupid. Neither was Gurk, for that matter. He was not even particularly cruel, for an orc. He just did not see humans as creatures worthy of empathy, or even pity.

Ga'vik had always felt an affinity for living things. He had felt it in his earliest memories, as he trailed after the elder hunters. As he learned to both kill and tame animals, he became aware that they had emotions and desires. They sought pleasure and avoided pain… they dreamt when they slept, too. Simple emotions and simple dreams, but a certain _presence_ nonetheless. They _lived_, and therefore they deserved life, when their death was not required. Ga'vik was a hunter and a leatherworker, so many animal deaths were required, but he never relished the killing. In those heady days, before he had been old enough to go to war, he had thought this must be true for all hunters who lived and died alongside their pets.

Once he joined the war, he climbed the ranks quickly. His status in his own tribe played a part in that, of course, but he himself was an efficient killing machine. Every blow he struck was potentially lethal, and every arrow aimed at heart, or jugular, or skull. Ga'vik saw that his comrades did not always do the same, but he did not question their technique. The Alliance members were less than animals, he told himself. They were The Enemy. Women and children of the Horde had suffered rape and torture at their hands, and The Enemy would reap what they had sowed.

He had been in the midst of a raging battle when his world had shifted. He had been crouched over an injured dwarf, his knife in hand, when he saw… _it_ in the dwarf's eyes. There was an awareness; the _presence_ that spoke of loving, and being loved. He had killed the dwarf, but found the disturbing feeling wouldn't leave him. Increasingly, he saw it in night elves, gnomes… and even in humans. They were The Enemy, still, but somehow they were also people.

He began to have doubts about killing those who were not actively trying to kill him. About putting himself in situations that would _cause_ them to try and kill him, especially avoidable situations.

He began to have doubts about the war.

Expressing the doubts, unfortunately, had been a terrible idea. Then there had been the whole unpleasant business with his tribe… Ga'vik cursed himself for following that train of thought. He was _here_, now. He had not been condemned to death or exiled entirely from the Horde, so he should try to make the most of it. Even if it meant dragging his poor raptor through the drifting silicate wastes of Tanaris, on a "diplomatic" mission for the goblins, traveling with a rag-tag group of green orcs (literally and figuratively) and a smelly tauren druid.

In truth, Eikahe was the best part of being an outcast. Ga'vik had met him a couple of years ago, not long after the whole unpleasantness. They made a good team: Ga'vik killing swiftly and skilfully – Eikahe healing any injuries before Ga'vik even noticed them. They did not actively seek out conflicts, but defended themselves easily on the low-ranking missions they were assigned.

On occasion, Eikahe's mercy took a different form than Ga'vik's, as was the case with the little human. The troll sighed. Eikahe had once carried a panther cub around for weeks, bottle-feeding it some nasty druid concoction until it was old enough to nibble at bits of meat.

Look how well that had turned out. Lujin was a spoiled and wilful pet. Some days, Ga'vik felt certain that she considered _him_ to be _her_ pet.

When Ga'vik returned to Eikahe's tent, the tauren had given Litha some broth with a few small pieces of meat, which she was picking at slowly.

"She ate the first bit too quickly, and brought it up again," said Eikahe, beaming down at her, "but she insisted on trying again. The solid food will help her heal faster."

Ga'vik accepted his own dinner from the tauren – blackened basilisk. _Again_. They had brought some rations on the trip, but had been subsisting mainly on any animals brought down by the troll or the other hunters. He ate it quickly before moving to set up his own tent.

When he was done, he came back to stare at the human, who was still finishing her broth. Her tiny pink tongue darted out for the last few droplets. He found himself staring in fascination. Even Lujin, who had been so scornful of the filthy creature at first, seemed taken with her now. He often found her touching the human lightly with her delicate whiskers, which was as close as she came to showing affection. Lu lay in the sand at her feet even now.

Finally, Litha finished her meal. Eikahe took the bowl from her and Ga'vik cleared his throat, indicating the tent with a large, three-fingered hand. He had never gone to bed with her awake. He felt incredibly awkward.

"We change your bandage, and go to bed," he stated, in Orcish. The human only stared at him with wide, hazel-green eyes until he clicked his teeth and looked away. He ruffled his hair and said more forcefully, "Come."

She followed him slowly to the tent. She seemed determined to use the damaged leg, though it clearly pained her. Ga'vik resisted the urge to pick her up again, remembering his last attempt to restrain her. It had been entirely _too_ enjoyable to feel her squirm against him. As she limped through the deep, unforgiving sand, he ground his teeth impatiently and scanned the campsite for anyone watching, though most of the orcs had already crept into their own tents.

When she managed to drag herself onto the bedroll at last, Ga'vik gathered the bandaging supplies and sat cross-legged at her side. They had come across very few humanoids in Tanaris, and bandages were in short supply. Initially Eikahe had been cleansing and re-using their meagre stock as best he could. When it became clear the wound was badly infected, the tauren had thrown out all of the used bandages and torn his own linen shirt into strips. Fortunately, the enormous shirt had provided a sufficient number of them. With the wound shrinking at last, they needed fewer each day.

Keeping his eyes averted from hers, Ga'vik pushed her thin dress slightly up her leg to uncover the whole of her thigh. The shapeless dress, still a dirty grey but even thinner since Eikahe's vigorous cleaning, barely covered her as it was. The original burn extended slightly above her hip, and Eikahe had been surprisingly clinical about shifting her as needed to bathe and bandage her, so Ga'vik had been able to admire her fully from several different angles. He did not feel so at ease now that she was _looking_ at him.

He put a finger behind her knee to lift it slightly, and unwound the old bandage as quickly as he could, reciting Eikahe's instructions in his mind. A few drops of precious water were used to lightly clean the wound; then, sparingly, a fresh layer of herbal balm. Lastly, a snug wrap of fresh linen, the ends tucked neatly to hold it in place on her slim thigh.

He would not linger to trace the swirls of fresh pink scar tissue along the outside of her thigh, or to admire the smoother, unburned skin that ran up the inside. He would certainly _not_ let his eyes trace upward to where her thighs met…

Actually, Eikahe had not given him those last instructions, but Ga'vik recited them to himself anyway. As he worked, he realized that the human was speaking to him. Her voice was hoarse from disuse, but grew smoother each time she spoke. Startled, he jerked the bandage more tightly than he intended, and her tiny scarred hand fluttered down to stay his own. When he stopped, she moved her hand away just as quickly. She did not speak again, but clutched a bit of the bedroll in her fist. Ga'vik cursed Eikahe for assigning this duty to him tonight. He would much rather have prepared the food.

Litha continued to stare at him as he carefully tucked the supplies away. After a moment's hesitation, he forced himself to go through his usual routine of unbuckling his simple leather armour, peeling off his chain mail shirt and the sweaty linen shirt underneath, and stretching in the sand beside her with a leather bag as a pillow. He had been leaving his leather trousers on since she'd been sharing his tent, but he felt as naked as a newborn now, with her eyes burning into him.

As casually as he could, he rolled onto his side to hide the effect her gaze was having on his trousers. Even after her soft breaths had slowed in sleep, Ga'vik lay awake for a long time, watching the shadows shrink and disappear against the sand outside. When Umog kicked the sole of his foot to wake him for the evening watch, Ga'vik felt as if he'd just closed his eyes.


	7. 7: Ga'vik loses control of the situation

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

It happened on his watch.

It was close to dusk, and he had been crouched at the top of a dune, peering into the distance and trying to stay focused. The lack of sleep, the glare of the setting sun, and the heat coming up off the sand in waves made him squint and blink.

At first he thought he was seeing a mirage, but when he rubbed his eyes furiously, it did not dissipate. There was a faint glimmer on the horizon; an extra sparkle to the sand. He thought he heard a buzzing sound, barely noticeable above the usual shushing of the shifting desert.

Ga'vik was standing to get a better look when he heard the shouts from camp, and a scream that was definitely not Orcish. His heart began to pound, but his hunter's self-discipline kept him still a moment longer. The sparkles had begun to coalesce into a long, shimmering line. It was spreading quickly. _Approaching_. Ga'vik clicked his teeth and narrowed his eyes.

When Eikahe called for him, his moment of hesitation was over. He whirled toward the camp and broke into a run, skidding and sliding down the dune. He whistled for Lujin as he ran, but she sped straight past him, ghosting over the next dune as his heavier feet sank into it.

He was already drawing his bow as he crested the peak. What he saw made him falter once more. There were no enemies in sight; only his party members and the human. She was clearly naked, huddled under Eikahe in his mighty bear form, surrounded by orcs in various states of undress. Gurk was nearest to the druid, challenging the bear with both axes, while Eikahe snarled and threatened. Three other orcs stood behind Gurk, but the rest seemed as indecisive as Ga'vik. They had their weapons drawn as well, but Umog appeared to be holding them back.

Ga'vik lowered the drawn arrow several inches, raised it, and lowered it again. Questioning your superiors was one thing, but killing them was another. He watched the big orc circling slowly around the bear. He could see that Eikahe had struck already; Gurk's left arm was clawed and bleeding steadily, though his axes never wavered. The bear growled and swatted, but the orc was out of range, and Eikahe was clearly reluctant to move away from Litha.

The other orcs shouted a variety of taunts and encouragements. The smell of blood had them riled up, regardless of how they felt about fighting with allies. One of the other hunters sent his boar around behind the druid, and Ga'vik belatedly spotted Lujin, already launching herself in a black streak from the shadow of his tent.

The troll sucked air through his teeth in a hiss of irritation as his wayward pet hit the boar's flank. The next instant, she was tearing the beast's throat out with her powerful jaws even as her hind claws eviscerated it. The orcs roared in surprise and glee. One of Gurk's toadies took the momentary distraction as an opportunity, and plunged his spear into Eikahe's rump.

"Fuck it," said Ga'vik. He raised his bow and let fly. The spear-plunging orc dropped with a feathered shaft sprouting from his right eye. One of the other orcs pointed at Ga'vik with an indignant yell, and two of them started pelting toward him immediately. An orc hunter lifted his gun, and the sand to Ga'vik's left erupted with a boom. The troll lifted his bow again.

Then, all hell broke loose.

Ga'vik thought, at first, that _he_ had done it – summoned _demons_, somehow, in his anger and frustration. They coursed down the dune to either side of him, clicking and humming, metallic shells gleaming in the setting sun. Millions of them swarmed over the sand toward camp, into camp, over camp…

Silithids. They moved as a fluid might, cresting over tents and orcs alike. Ga'vik began firing arrow after arrow, then shouldered his bow and drew his knife, wading through the insects to reach Eikahe. The orcs were disappearing – dragged under the glimmering waves, screaming and hacking uselessly with their weapons. Ga'vik could still hear Eikahe growling and roaring, drawing the monsters to him. Lujin was there, too, caterwauling in fury and pain as she struggled to sink her claws into the hard carapaces surrounding her.

Ga'vik called for Jozala, his voice cracking in an effort to be heard above the din. He gasped in relief as he saw her familiar red head appear. She was snapping her jaws in every direction as she moved, crunching the silithids as quickly as they could climb on her. She was unsaddled, but Ga'vik grabbed one of the spines at her neck, and hauled himself over her shoulders, kicking hurriedly as strong mandibles nearly removed one of his toes.

Above the fray, he could see the outline of the camp again, and there – Eikahe batting and swatting at the loa-damned bugs. Ga'vik drew his bow again and began picking off the larger ones as he spurred Jozala toward the bear.

The troll noted with horror that as the initial wave flooded past them, much larger silithids were appearing: lumbering scarabs, skulking reavers, and darkening the sky with their numbers, wasps. The wasps darted in and out of the melee, lifting dead and damaged silithids free to carry them loas-knew-where. Ga'vik had heard they would cannibalize their own when resources were scarce, as his own kind used to do. The thought of it made him shudder.

Behind them, at the top of the dune he had crested only minutes ago, Ga'vik spotted something else that made his skin crawl. It was covered in a gleaming, segmented carapace, as the others were, but wore also an intricately woven robe and sat astride a giant, blue reaver. It was surveying the battle dispassionately, seemingly content that everything was well in hand. An imp pranced and skittered at its side, then impulsively cast a fireball into the camp, setting one of the tents alight.

Ga'vik turned away and kicked desperately at Jozala's sides, casting about for Eikahe. He spotted a hulking black shape amidst the swarm and urged the raptor toward it. When he drew closer, the figure straightened and became Eikahe in his tauren form. He was hauling something off the ground with one arm and heaving it onto Ga'vik's lap. It was the naked human. Eikahe's other arm was missing.

Dread welling up in his chest, Ga'vik reached out to grasp the tauren's shoulder, hoping to haul him onto the raptor, as well. Eikahe shrugged him away.

"Go!" the tauren bellowed above the obscene sound of clicking and buzzing. "You can get away – I will hold them!" The tauren spun to avoid the stinger of a silithid creeper, and Ga'vik fired at the monster's head. Its legs scrabbled uselessly at the sand as the arrow pinned it in place. The troll groped for another arrow and scanned to area, looking for help. He could not see any more orcs. As he watched, a wasp shot up in the air, a worg's head clutched in its insectile legs. Another tent exploded in flames.

"GO," Eikahe shouted again, but this time he added, "Lujin!" and suddenly the crazed, yowling cat was hurtling toward them. Ga'vik tried to whistle but the sand in his mouth made it come out as a hiss. The panther landed with teeth and claws imbedded in the base of Jozala's tail, and then they were moving, running, dragging Lujin and silithids alike as the raptor tried to dislodge the source of her pain. Ga'vik released a stream of curses and reached back to try and shove his pet off.

In his fear for Eikahe, he had forgotten about the human draped over his lap, and she slipped, nearly falling into the sea of chattering insects. This seemed to bring her to life, and she flailed and grabbed one of his pauldrons to right herself. Then all three of them were teetering and clutching desperately at the raptor's unsaddled back as the beast shrieked and reared to bite a reaver in two.

When Ga'vik regained his balance, Lujin was pressed against his back, her front claws digging painfully into his shoulders. Litha had both arms around his chest, and he could feel her hot, shuddering breath at the base of his throat. Without dislodging them, he tried to twist his head enough to see Eikahe, but he could only hear him: his thundering roars a counterpoint to the steady whirring of the silithids. The fifth roar ended in a blood-curdling howl, and then there were no more.

After that, Ga'vik let Jozala have her head. The panicked raptor barrelled straight into the oncoming flood of insects and cleared a path for herself with her razor-toothed jaws as she ran. The troll merely clung to her with his knees, stabbing with his skinning knife at any silithids he could reach, still clutching his bow with the other. He was out of arrows.

They swept up and down several more dunes before Ga'vik realized the swarm was thinning. By the next dune, there was only a trickle of insects still coming toward them. They were smaller, as the ones in the first wave had been.

Finally, there was only sand.


	8. 8: Litha lives on

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

Litha had seen the last of the silithids disappear into the distance some time ago, but the raptor was still moving at a jarring speed. The sun had set ahead of them, and stars were appearing in the sky over Ga'vik's shoulder as Litha watched. They were headed west. She figured they would probably turn at some point and head back to Gadgetzan, but she felt a little lighter as they made steady progress away from the goblin hub.

Shortly after the last of the insects had skittered over the horizon, the panther had released the troll's shoulders from her grip and dropped to the sand. She coursed beside the raptor, never straying further than an arm's length from its side. She ran with her ears pinned flat, unusually subdued.

The troll, for his part, clung doggedly to the raptor and stared straight ahead, cobalt eyes unwavering from the horizon. He stayed like that for hours as they traveled, even when Litha began to shift and look around. After the sun went down, the dry desert air became cooler as it whipped past them. Eventually, Litha began to shiver, and she was forced to press herself even harder against the troll, trying to absorb his warmth. The orc had torn her dress off, and she had nothing on but the slave collar and a few strips of linen around one thigh.

The orc had done more than take her dress, of course. She shifted again to relieve the ache between her legs. It would have been worse if the tauren hadn't intervened. Still, her bruises ached as she trembled with cold on the raptor's prickly, scaled back.

Her squirming seemed to rouse the troll at last, and he glanced quickly at her before reaching back to grasp his light cloak and tug it around her. She huddled under it in relief, and tucked it beneath herself as protection against the rough scales.

She was just beginning to relax into the rhythm of the raptor's movement when Ga'vik began to speak. He spoke quietly at first, then increased in volume as he gathered speed. It was not Orcish, but also nothing like the harsh, coarse words he had exchanged with the tauren. _Zandali_, she decided.

He went on for a long time, sometimes emphasizing his words with one-handed gesticulations. At first his words were mostly snapped away by the wind as they moved. As he grew louder, the raptor began to toss its head and the panther would occasionally turn her face up to observe them with wide, golden eyes. Even when he began to shout, Litha thought his tone was more sad than angry, and she recognized Eikahe's name more than once.

Eventually, his voice began to break, and then died off. Litha thought she heard a choked sound at the end, but did not look at his face. He grieved in silence after that, only clicking is tongue to slow the raptor when it began to stumble. They continued at a more sustainable pace, though still moving more swiftly than they had with the orcs.

Litha slept for a while, cradled under his arm and cloak, surrounded by his now-familiar smell. She woke to the early morning light and a tickling sensation at her throat. The troll was fastening the cloak around her. She jerked in surprised as he put his large hands around her waist and lifted her up, turning slowly to lower her onto the sand. She had a moment of gut-wrenching fear when she thought he would abandon her, but he slid down as well and stretched.

They had a single water skin with them, and the troll sipped from it now and offered it to her. She drank sparingly as she watched him. He looked exhausted, as far as Litha could tell. His normally bright blue eyes were dull and lidded, and he slouched a little lower than usual. He ran both his hands over his face – delicately avoiding the tusks – then up over his spiky hair. He swung his head to gaze in the direction they had come, then took the water skin back and simply began to walk. The raptor and panther trailed along. After a moment's hesitation, Litha followed them.

They continued west as the sun rose at their backs.

Litha moved slowly. Her groin ached, her hips and thighs were stippled with bruises, and the too-tight scar tissue of her burned leg had split open during her struggle with the orc. She could feel it pulling each time the muscles flexed, pulsing in pain.

The troll gestured to her impatiently at first, then abruptly slowed his own pace to match hers. She understood the need to rest the raptor after their headlong flight, but she was struggling to walk through the unforgiving sand at all.

She saw Ga'vik watching her sidelong, and wondered how she must look to him. She was at least draped in his frayed cloak now, but she knew there was little point in feigning modesty. He had been carrying her around, naked or half-naked, since he had found her under the goblin wagon.

She had been a pretty enough girl, once upon a time, though never particularly striking. Her close friend, Sarrolen, had been porcelain-skinned, blond and busty, and had drawn appreciative looks wherever they went. Litha had lamented her own slight curves and excess of freckles. Her time with the goblins had not improved matters. What little padding she'd had was gone, replaced by hard angles. She felt as frail as a ninety-year-old lady, and figured she looked worse. She knew her hair was singed and ragged, though either the troll or the tauren had apparently braided it while she slept.

The scar on her neck would be a permanent reminder of the slave collar, even if it were ever removed (and Litha found that within herself, she _did_ hold out a faint hope for that). The puckered scar on the palm of her right hand was not so visible, but nearly the whole outer length of her left leg was a mess of angry red splotches. She knew that the colour would fade over time, but not even the greatest healer in the Alliance could remove scars such as those, once they had set.

The bandage on her thigh was crusted with dirt and blood. Litha was worried it would lead to more infection, and picked at it carefully as they walked. The inside of her other thigh was also streaked with dried blood. Litha bit her lip and refused to think of that. It was over and done. The orc was dead, as was the tauren who had come and shoved the orc off. The silithids had killed them both, and she lived on.

It would not do to dwell on the past. Whenever she thought of the past, she would remember her own mistakes, and all the bitterness would well up anew. She would remember Darrick, the handsome mage, and how he had asked her to meet him at his tiny cottage. She had been suspicious, but flattered. She knew he preferred to rest his eyes on Sarrolen, as they all did, but she had ignored the warning bells in her mind and met him all the same.

She had not been entirely innocent. She had expected him to make a pass, and had already been planning to let him down gently when he had launched into a soul-baring soliloquy about his alchemical research, the difficulty in obtaining certain banned substances for use in his experiments, and his resulting financial ruin.

As if that weren't shocking enough, he had lifted his hands as if in apology, only to _blink _himself suddenly beside her, and hit her over the head with something heavy. She had awoken with a pounding headache and a slave collar on, bound and helpless.

The next few weeks had been a blur as he smuggled her out of Elwynn like a sack of potatoes. When he had turned her over to the goblins at last, Litha had felt a strange mix of chagrin and satisfaction as the goblins told him she wasn't worth anything _near _what they were owed.

Litha shook her head. She_ must_ not let her mind linger on those things. Darrick had met his fate (_it had been a grisly one, thank the Light_) and she lived on. She must accept her path and keep going.

If her path led her to any Alliance outposts… well, she did not have too much pride to ask for help. She felt certain that if she could get back to Stormwind, Archbishop Benidictus would be able to remove the collar. It was true that she had no living family, but the other novice priests would remember her, and they would believe she had never willingly signed any of the goblins' contracts. There would be an outcry, surely, and the whole practice of goblin slavery would be banned. Goblins would be hunted down and slaughtered, all other slaves would be freed, and Litha would be hailed as a hero.

_If _her path led her to any Alliance outposts. She could not even recall if there were any in Tanaris.

_Where was the troll planning to take her, anyway? _Litha wished that she had learned more Orcish, though the troll was scowling and aloof, and did not seem to like the language any more than she did.

Instead, she dredged up a mental map. Un'Goro was to the west of Tanaris. She had come from there, with the goblins, and she thought it had been weeks since they left. Even if they spent most of their time riding the sure-footed raptor, it seemed a long way to go with a single skin of water. _What would they drink?_

Litha's second question was answered quickly. The troll had stopped suddenly to point in the distance. She could just make out the shape of a lone hyena, skulking around a red rock that jutted up out of the sand. At a word, the troll sent his pet after it, and then followed in loping strides, knife in hand. She realized that although he still carried his bow, he seemed to be out of arrows. Litha waited with the raptor, who crooned at her and bobbed its head soothingly. She had always believed raptors were intelligent, fearsome beasts, but this one reminded her a little of Sarrolen's pet parakeet.

They drank the hyena's blood, then ate the meat raw. It was warm, and chewy, and salty. Litha thought it might be an acquired taste. She did not like the way the tough sinew snagged in her teeth, but she forced it down. The troll ate quickly and surprisingly delicately, though he would not be asked to dine with the High Priestess anytime soon. His eyes scanned the horizon continuously as he ate. The panther ate delicately as well, then groomed herself from head to tail. The raptor ate with rather _indelicate_ relish.

Before they moved on, Ga'vik skinned the hyena and draped its hide on the back of the raptor to dry. When they started to walk again, Litha found that her legs had stiffened, and she was barely able to move. She was unused to the exercise. Without a word, the troll lifted her again and placed her back astride the raptor. With his large, green, three-fingered hands, he placed her own hands on one of the raptor's neck spines for support.

"Hold," she thought he said in Orcish, though his accent was terrible.

"Yes," she replied. He met her eyes for once, and she read worry, and grief, and anger there. He started to turn away, but stopped suddenly and clicked his teeth. Ruffling his hair with one hand, he looked sidelong at her again, then let out a stream of choppy Orcish. Litha shook her head helplessly, not understanding.

Clearly frustrated, he growled and turned away fully, kicking at the sand. He rubbed more vigorously at his hair. When he turned back, his expression had softened again. He lifted one finger and pressed it lightly on the inside of her good thigh, where she had scrubbed off the blood with a handful of sand. She had not been able to scrub off the bruises.

"Sorry," he said, clearly, though his cobalt eyes seemed to say a great deal more. She was too stunned to reply, for a moment.

"I… sorry… Eikahe," she said at last, carefully watching his expression. He scowled and looked away, jutting his lower lip up between his tusks, his powerful jaw muscles flexing. He nodded sharply, then seemed to come to some internal decision, and nodded again, more slowly.

He squeezed her thigh briefly before drawing his hand away. "Come," he said, and they moved on.


	9. 9: Litha examines the situation

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

They traveled through the hot mid-day sun and into the evening. Ga'vik and the panther killed two more hyenas, and in addition to the pelts draped over the raptor's neck, there were now strips of meat drying on its rump. They had spotted a basilisk once, too, but Ga'vik had watched it for several minutes before shaking his head wearily, and waving to indicate they would give it a wide berth.

By nightfall, the raptor and the panther were both dragging their feet, though Litha had been able to nap while mounted. She was entertained by the raptor's efforts to casually crane its immense head back and snatch at the pieces of drying meat. Ga'vik, without even turning his own head, would invariably snap out a sharp word at the last moment, and the beast would straighten out again, chirruping indignantly.

Eventually, Litha deduced that the word he was using might be the raptor's name. Feeling brave, she caught the troll's attention by saying, "Ga'vik." He stopped and whirled toward her, looking surprised.

She pointed to him and said it again, "Ga'vik." Then she pointed to herself, "Litha," and the raptor, "…Jo?"

The troll nodded, then added, "…zala. Jozala."

When Litha repeated the name, the raptor tipped its head back and screeched cheerfully, flexing its talons. Litha patted its neck. She decided Jozala sounded like a female name, and the raptor seemed sort of… feminine, for a reptile. Litha wasn't sure you could actually tell, with raptors.

Before she lost the troll's attention, Litha pointed to the panther as well.

"Lujin," the troll said immediately, and scowled at his pet. When she did not even flick an ear, he said more loudly, "LU!" The black cat continued to examine one paw with feline impudence. When Litha dutifully repeated the name, she got the same response.

Ga'vik looked annoyed, but unsurprised. Snorting, he looked at Litha to see if she was satisfied, then turned and continued to trudge through the sand. He did not seem interested in an extended conversation. He pressed on relentlessly.

Litha knew the silithids were still a threat, and suspected they were high-tailing it out of Tanaris to avoid another attack. She found herself wondering if trolls even needed to sleep. Maybe he could stay awake indefinitely, but she doubted the raptor or the panther would be able to.

Finally, early on the second morning after the silithid attack, Ga'vik simply stopped walking, and dropped into a crouch. Litha thought he must have seen another hyena, until she realized his eyes were closed. She thought he looked a little paler green than usual, and his unruly black hair was stuck to his forehead and neck in sweaty clumps. She noticed the tips of his long, pointed ears were peeling a little. If he had looked exhausted yesterday, he looked positively ill today.

She was just debating whether the get down off of Jozala to check on him when he put both hands on the ground and pressed himself back up into a standing position, swaying a little. He rubbed his hair, sighed, and pointed vaguely toward one of the large skeletons that poked up out of the sand nearby.

When they made their way over to it, he draped the hyena skins across some of the white, arched ribs to produce a little shade, and wrapped the dried meat in his chain mail shirt for safe keeping. The raptor chattered and squawked until he relented and tossed her a piece. Then he peeled off his linen shirt as well, wadded it up for a pillow, and stretched out in the sand on his back.

Within moments his breathing had slowed, and Litha realized he was already asleep. Lujin followed him into the shade and stretched out after a cursory groom. Jozala settled herself down in the morning sunlight, churring quietly and tucking her short little arms under her chest.

Litha sat and watched the trio sleep for a while. She listened to the soft shush of the desert consuming itself, and felt oddly peaceful.

She stared at the troll. Although Litha had been unconscious for most of the time she had known him, he had become somehow familiar to her. The way he scowled good-naturedly at Lujin's insolence… Litha found herself thinking, _Ah, that's the way he always scowls at Lujin_, even though she could not remember seeing him do it before. In the back of her mind, she even had an image, somehow, of the troll with a wide, teasing grin - pointed teeth and tusks flashing in the sun. She was not sure if she had seen this, or imagined it. She liked to think it was real, but was unsettled by the thought of wanting to make a troll smile.

Regardless, it seemed unlikely she would see that smile anytime soon. He did not seem to smile (or speak) very much, and he was clearly upset by the death of the tauren. Litha had thought the tauren a remarkably kind and gentle soul, but could not dredge up a great deal of grief for him. She had not really known him… not like... _well_. Did she think she knew the troll?

No. She didn't _know_ anyone. Faces flashed painfully through her mind: Darrick, the betrayer; Sarrolen and the other novices in her class, none of whom had come to save her after she'd been kidnapped; the Light-forsaken goblins… and the others, the various members of the Alliance who had seen her since she'd been a slave: had looked into her eyes as the goblins dragged her around like an old goat to slaughter, and done… _nothing_.

She slammed a door on those thoughts, as she had trained herself to do. She, _Litha_, was a survivor, and she could only rely on herself and her own strength. Accepting someone's assistance was not the same as trusting them.

Anyway, she would need to stay with the troll a while longer. She was hardly equipped to make her own way out of the desert. There was no harm in appreciating his competence while it aided her own survival. He seemed downright reliable, in fact, and for a troll, he was not bad to look at.

Litha admired his muscular torso as he slept, letting her eyes track the black line of hairs below his navel again. He had a lean, athletic build, though his shoulders were heavily muscled from drawing the bow. Litha had always had a weakness for shoulders.

Across his upper chest, left shoulder, and curving over toward his back, there was a mosaic of stippled images and designs. The intricate pattern was punctuated by a few long lines, and Litha realized that some of them were the claw marks of a large animal. They were scars, she realized, and unconsciously rubbed her fingertips over the puckering of her right palm. The layer of grime coating the troll made it difficult to pick out the shapes, but Litha thought there was a panther. Lujin, maybe? Or merely a symbol?

She sat back and looked at his face. He had eyelashes, which she found as oddly surprising as the presence of his navel. They were short but dense. He did not seem to grow a beard, unless he had been shaving while she slept, but had bristly sideburns to match his hair. The tusks were… intriguing, to say the least. She wondered dispassionately if troll men went down on their women. _How would that work_?

Litha had not been a virgin when the goblins had taken her, thank the Light. She hadn't even been one when she had joined the Priesthood. She'd been a precocious child and an impetuous teenager, but a lonely one. She had known it was no substitute for real love, even then, but she had enjoyed the fleeting intimacy that came with sex.

With the goblins, sex had not been… optional. It wasn't pleasant, but sometimes it was preferable to the beatings. She had quickly learned that it could be used to her advantage, and had done so whenever possible.

It would not be _so_ bad, she decided, to have sex with the troll, if it came to that. He did not smell as vile as the goblins, or the orc, or the tauren. She actually thought he smelled better than most of the human men she had been with, and none of them had been slogging through the desert for weeks without a bath.

Litha looked down at herself. She was equally scarred, though not so artfully. She was too scrawny to be merely 'thin', and her burnt hair hung raggedly. She was not sure her body was a very good bargaining chip, but it was the only one she had. She would not hesitate to play it.


	10. 10: Ga'vik follows a whim

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

Ga'vik pressed them hard, desperate to get out of Tanaris. He hated the desert. He hated the unforgiving sun and the absence of any sheltering foliage. He hated relying on the next fresh kill to slake his thirst.

He hated the way the dunes seemed to suck at his feet, slowing his every step, and he hated the way the sand got in his teeth. He clicked them together and spat.

He hated the loa-damned insects that had swept over his life and killed Eikahe. He hated Eikahe for dying. He hated the girl for living.

He should have wheeled Jozala around as soon as they were clear of the swarm, headed for Gadgetzan, and completed his mission. Once he'd informed the goblins that they were all going to die at the hands of the Qiraji, he could have headed north to spend some time fishing in Thousand Needles.

They probably would have made him hand over the girl, but what did it matter to him?

He glanced over his shoulder at Jozala. The human was draped over the middle of her back, looking as boneless as the hyena skins and strips of meat. He relented immediately. How could he hate someone that slept like that? She looked so… ingenuous. Like a child. Ga'vik found it charming.

He had already decided not to take her back to the goblins, anyway. Eikahe always had noble intentions, but he counted on Ga'vik to come up with a plan, and the troll was certain that the soft-hearted tauren hadn't really meant to turn the human over to her slavers. Ga'vik would indulge Eikahe's last silly, merciful whim, and get the human somewhere safe - away from goblin territory.

That didn't really describe Un'Goro, but Ga'vik needed to get them out of the desert. By his estimates, they would reach the crater's edge in only two or three days if he kept up the pace - riding Jozala by night, and walking through the cooler parts of the morning and evening, with a quick nap at mid-day whenever he spotted a place to drape the skins for shade.

He worried constantly that they would come across another silithid swarm, but hoped the slaughter was focused mainly on the more heavily traveled route to the south. He tried to keep their path north of the Noxious Lair, probably the base of the silithids they had seen, and south of Sandsorrow Watch. He still had some friends among the trolls, but definitely not in the Sandfury tribe.

He walked, rode, walked, killed a hyena, ate, slept. Walked, killed, ate, rode, walked, slept. Walked…

Suddenly, it was there, in front of them. Sand, rocks, and then… a green abyss. Hooting with joy and relief, he jogged to the edge and looked down. The human slid off of Jozala to join him, looking aghast. She asked him something in her soft, rolling tongue.

"Un'goro," he explained waving his arm toward the crater. She rolled her eyes and nodded.

"_Yes_," she said, in her precise but limited Orcish, then shrugged dramatically, palms up in a questioning gesture.

"Don't worry," he said, "dere be plenty of ways to get down." _Plenty of short ways with a surprise ending_, he added to himself. _Fewer ways that ended with all your insides and outsides in the correct order_.

After glancing first one direction, then the other, Ga'vik clicked his teeth in decision and started north. Lujin followed easily along, walking so perilously close to the edge of the crater that pebbles plinked over as they were dislodged by her paws. She did not deign to notice. Jozala stayed well away from the edge, chittering nervously.

It was nearly dusk when he found what he was looking for. The initial lip of the cliff dropped as precipitously as elsewhere, but after a few metres the side wall became rougher and irregular with staggered ledges jutting out. Halfway down was a larger shelf with its own trees and a small clearing. The ground floor of the canyon was hidden in tree canopies and mist.

Ga'vik's mouth fairly watered at the thought of spending the next day in cool, blissful shade. He waved Litha over frantically, pointing and saying in Orcish, "Look at dat! Don't dat look beautiful?" The human looked warily over the edge and made a small, doubtful sound.

In response, Ga'vik flagged Lujin. For once, she responded quickly to his command, and lightly hopped from the top of the cliff to the first ledge. Glancing up to pin them with her conceited, golden gaze, she swished her tail briefly before continuing down toward the clearing. The black cat felt the pull of the cool, shady forest as powerfully as the troll did.

Ga'vik gave a similar command to Jozala, but the raptor edged her large feet back and gave a worried screech.

"You'll have to come down unless you want to stay in this loa-forsaken desert by yourself," he told her in Zandali.

When she only bobbed her head nervously in reply, he turned to the human. She was hugging the cloak tightly around herself, despite the lingering heat of the day. He did not recall seeing fear in those forest-coloured eyes since he had first found her under the burnt wagon. Resignation, at times, but not fear.

He felt suddenly tender toward her. "Come, I carry you," he said in Orcish, then turned away from her and crouched, gesturing with his hands that she should climb on his back. "Come," he repeated, a word he knew she understood.

The human looked down into the canyon a long time before coming tentatively toward him. With a little sigh, she wrapped her arms around his neck as he hooked his arms behind her knees and hoisted. She was still terribly light.

Ga'vik edged toward the crater, then turned and eased himself slowly over, pausing to scold Jozala again for her cowardice. He did not want to leave her behind, but they would all perish if he didn't find shade and water soon.

The going was slow, and Ga'vik had to release the human's legs as he sought hand and toe-holds to grasp between ledges. She wrapped her legs around his waist with surprising strength. Her arms, as well, held him in a vice-like grip until he tapped one of them with a choking sound, and she eased the pressure on his throat.

The failing light made the troll's task somewhat harder, and he was forced to navigate mainly by feel, tusks scraping as he pressed himself flat against the rock face. As the moon rose, he could feel the human shifting to look around, presumably taking in the view of the moonlit, forested crater beneath them.

She spoke to him in her own tongue, to which he grunted noncommittally in reply. She spoke again, using Jozala's name, but Ga'vik could not decipher what she was trying to say. Abruptly she turned and leaned back from her waist, holding his shoulders only lightly. He was dimly aware that she was calling up at the raptor, as he pressed himself hard against the rock and clutched with all six fingers to keep them from toppling backward into the chasm.

"Stop, hold on, fuck, _stop_ _it_!" he gasped desperately, in Zandali, then even less coherently in Orcish.

When she leaned close again, reducing the leverage on his frantically clawing fingers, he managed to creep over to the nearest shelf before dropping to a crouch, panting and shaking. The human stepped away from him and wrung her hands, looking apologetic. She spoke again in her language. Ga'vik thought she spoke an awful lot.

After a moment, there was a muffled crash above them and a small avalanche of sand as Jozala launched herself at the first ledge. She peered down to their position and gave a screech before scrabbling to the verge and flinging herself dramatically at the next ledge. She was not as elegant about it as Lujin had been, but she was steady and sure-footed on her talon-tipped feet.

Ga'vik glared at the human, ruffling his hair with one hand to relieve the pounding of his own heart. "See? She be jus' fine. Jo don' need your help," he said.

Litha only cooed with relief at the raptor, clapping her hands and calling her name until Ga'vik grabbed her arm and tugged her around.

"Come," he said simply, and hunkered down to let her climb on again.

The rest of the climb was uneventful. The human held tight and did not lean back, and Ga'vik eased them slowly down into the canyon. The larger ledge he had spotted proved to be a fair place to camp, as he'd hoped, with little risk of being chanced upon by other travelers - though few were likely to choose this direct route down from the desert.

Pleased with himself, the troll stretched, sucked through his teeth, and spat the last grains of Tanaris from his mouth.


	11. 11: Litha is charmed

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

Litha turned slowly in the moonlight to examine the small plateau. Ga'vik was already busy, collecting a small pile of deadwood. _So practical, _she thought ruefully, and dropped lazily to sit on the soft, mossy ground.

Lujin immediately began scouting the edge of the trees. Jozala had arrived safely on their level, and began to explore the site as well, snuffling noisily as she examined the ground. As she rounded some boulders, she gave a squawk and Ga'vik stopped what he was doing to jog over to her. He gave a small grunt of surprise, then gestured to Litha to follow. Hesitantly, she rounded the boulders, and saw Jozala standing at the edge of a small stream, water running out of her wide mouth.

Ga'vik padded to the stream's edge and collapsed to his hands and knees. Litha thought he was going to lap from the water like an animal, but instead, he plunged his whole face in and rolled it side to side. When he tossed his head back, he let out a shout of sheer joy. He turned to Litha, grinning.

She was completely taken aback, and could only stare, amazed and amused, as he began to strip off his armour and clothing. When he was down to his trousers, he paused. His smile turned suddenly coy. He made a twirling gesture with one hand, pointing at her. Litha realized his intention. He wanted her to turn around.

Caught up in his good humour, she shook her head, laughed, and reached up for the clasp of the cloak.

"Why should you be embarrassed, while I prance around as naked as a babe?" she asked, in Common.

She let the cloak puddle at her feet, then joined him in the stream, a few metres away. The water was shallow, coming barely above her ankles, but she crouched in it and shivered with delight as the coolness touched her bum. She looked back at the troll.

He had been watching her, his cobalt eyes intense. He said something in Zandali, and grinned again, then turned away and shucked his trousers unceremoniously. Litha was treated to a full view of his muscled backside as he stepped into the stream and stretched both arms over his head with a groan. He sat carefully on the rocky bottom, the water streaming around his narrow hips, then lay slowly back until he was as submerged as possible.

Litha thought it looked positively decadent, and lay back as well. After a few minutes she felt something pinch her toes, and sat up with a start.

Ga'vik had rolled onto his stomach, and was grinning impishly at her. His mood was infectious, and Litha laughed again and kicked water at his face. She could not remember ice-cold water ever feeling so good. She felt it rinsing away the dirty film of desert sand that clung to her. It almost seemed to be bubbling _through _her, as well.

Ga'vik laughed then, and asked in Orcish, somewhat unnecessarily, "Good, yeah?"

"_Yes_," she agreed, unable to resist correcting his pronunciation. This only made him laugh again, sharp white teeth flashing in mirth, and Litha felt the bubbling inside her turn to heat.

She was acutely aware of her own disappointment when he turned away and began to clean himself in earnest, using his ragged linen shirt as a washcloth. When he was done, he wrung it out and tossed it to her, still smiling, but without the same disarming intensity.

Litha cleaned herself slowly, then lay with the water flowing through her hair until her teeth began to chatter with cold. Unwilling to leave the refreshing power of the stream just yet, she sat up and clasped her knees to her chest.

The troll was humming softly, which she had never heard him do. He was clearly in his element. He had rinsed his trousers and the cloak as well, and wore the wet pants as he made camp. She watched him coax a small fire to life with a tiny heap of deadwood and damp-looking moss, then use a handful of the same moss to rub down the raptor, who churred and cooed at the attention.

Lujin reappeared with a small, scaled animal in her jaws. She deposited it at the troll's feet and began to clean her whiskers, looking unaffected by his praise.

Litha stayed shivering in the water as he skinned and gutted the creature, fashioned a spit out of a stick and some rocks, and angled it over the fire to cook. She hugged her legs close to her chest, closed her eyes, and listened to the soft gurgling of the stream and the humming of the troll. She could almost imagine that the cold purity of the water was washing everything off of her… _everything_.

She even started to feel the divine Light gathering within her chest, but then the slave collar tingled uncomfortably, and the spell was broken.

When she opened her eyes, the troll was watching her from the far side of the fire. He asked her something in Orcish that she didn't catch. He hugged himself and rubbed his arms, miming cold. She shook her head, though her teeth were probably chattering loud enough for him to hear. He let her be for a few more minutes, then abruptly came and wrapped one of the hyena skins around her shoulders, lifted her bodily out of the stream and deposited her closer to the fire.

Litha couldn't help but burrow a little closer against him when he started to move away. He smelled better without the harsh overtones of dust and sweat, and he was radiating delicious body heat. When she clutched at his arm, he crouched down again, hesitating, then shifted to sit and stretched out his legs to either side of her.

She rested her cheek against his chest and stared at the fire. After a few minutes, he started to hum again.

Some time later, he woke her up to make her eat a little charred meat. Litha pulled a face and said "Hot," as she picked off the blackest bits. She didn't know the Orcish word for "overcooked."

Ga'vik scowled at her and rubbed his hair. He looked flustered, and Litha almost felt badly for commenting on his cooking efforts. He pointed at her and said something in Orcish, of which Litha could only make out, "…you." When she shrugged, he pressed his hands together against one cheek, snored dramatically, and leaned his whole weight against her until she tipped to one side, laughing despite herself.

"I _don't _snore like that," she said in Common with as much dignity as she could muster. The troll seemed to catch her meaning, and gestured to a sleeping Jozala to reinforce his point.

"You," he said emphatically, as the raptor snorted and wheezed lustily.

"You think you're clever, don't you?" she asked, laughing again. This time Ga'vik only flashed his toothy grin at her. She felt the heat rising in her belly again as he pinned her with his dark, blue gaze. Then he turned away and busied himself tending the fire.

Litha stared into the flames for a long while. She could did not recall falling asleep again.


	12. 12: Litha enjoys a respite

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

The next few days passed in a pleasant haze, like a holiday after the punishing trek across Tanaris. Litha did not know where the troll intended to take her next, but after debating the merits of trying to descend further in Un'Goro Crater on her own, nude but for her slave collar and his cloak, she decided to wait it out.

She quickly learned that trolls _do _sleep. The troll slept enough during the first two days to more than make up for the time he had lost during their flight across the desert.

The day after their climb down, she was surprised to wake around noon to Ga'vik's eerily still body stretched out on one of the hyena skins nearby. Initially, Litha took advantage of the time alone to go lie in the stream again, revelling in the feeling of the icy, sparkling water cleansing her skin and her soul.

After a few hours, she was chilled to the bone and her toes were wrinkled like prunes so she crept back to the campsite. She pulled the freshly rinsed and dried cloak around herself and crouched over the sleeping troll. As she hovered over him, chewing her lip and considering where to poke, one densely-lashed lid lifted slightly to pin her with a blue glare.

Ga'vik said nothing but groaned and rolled onto his side away from her. After a moment he added a wave of dismissal over his shoulder. Litha moved away from him and huddled by the embers of last night's fire, feeling oddly lonely. She stirred the coals with a stick until the smell of last night's charred dinner hit her nose, and her stomach rumbled loudly.

The troll sat up as if she had shouted. When he yawned, Litha was treated to a wide array of sharp, white teeth. She thought soberly to herself that she _should_ find him frightening. Instead, she was relieved to see him up. Oblivious to her riveted gaze, Ga'vik stumbled away and relieved himself against a tree. He stopped by the stream to splash his face and have a drink before retrieving some of the dried hyena from within his chain mail shirt and wordlessly handing her a piece.

They chewed in silence. Afterward, the troll stood and stretched majestically before trudging about the site again, picking up more bits of dead wood and laying them in a stack by the fire pit. He thrust a few pieces of wood in with a handful of moss, bringing new life to the ashes, before lying down again on his hyena skin with a sigh.

Turning to her, he repeated a word several times in Orcish that she didn't understand. When she shook her head, he huffed and made a sort of 'tamping down' gesture with his hand.

"Quiet?" she asked uncertainly. This earned a non-committal grunt in reply. The troll went back to sleep.

She spent most of that day and the next wandering about the site as noiselessly as she could, feeding meagre portions of wood to the small fire, staring up at the sky, and speaking softly to the raptor and the panther. She fed some of the dried hyena to the raptor, who snatched it greedily. The panther disappeared for long stretches, but otherwise seemed content to sleep beside the troll.

The third morning she woke to find Ga'vik sitting by the fire, the skinning knife pressed against his forearm. She leapt up, startled and frightened, but he made no move to acknowledge her as she came to see what he was doing.

He would deliberately push the tip of the knife into his flesh until a bead of blood appeared, then quickly shift his grip to press a grain of sand or dirt into the wound, holding it firmly for several seconds. Litha had heard that trolls healed quickly, but she was amazed to see the small wounds would seal themselves after a minute of light pressure, leaving only a smudge of blood and a tiny bump.

Ga'vik was adding to the scar pattern that covered his chest, shoulders, and upper back. He was slowly marking out the outline of a bear.

She dropped to sit beside him, and watched in silence for a time. His face was calm and focused, frowning only slightly when some of the dots healed too well, and he was forced to go back and remake them. As Eikahe's bear form slowly took shape, Litha was impressed with how recognizable it was, though the troll had not seemed to use any sort of sketch or guiding outline.

"You're very artistic," she said at last, unable to think of any Orcish words that might apply. The troll flicked his eyes briefly at her, but continued with his task without pause.

"You talk too much, though," she added. "If you weren't talking all the time, you might be able to get some things done around here." She laughed at herself, and her sad little joke. It had been a long time since she'd been able to have a conversation, she realized. It had been a long time since she'd tried.

"Are all of your pictures… friends who have died? Or are they just people you have cared for? Or animals, I suppose. They mostly look like animals, actually. What about the cat?" When the troll made no response again, Litha lifted a finger to point at the panther on his chest. "Is it Lujin?"

The troll stopped what he was doing and tucked his chin down to look where she was pointing. He grunted and shook his head _no_, repeating Lujin's name again with a negative gesture.

"Ga," he said.

"Ga," Litha repeated. When he didn't elaborate, she went on. "Ga… is that… does it mean cat? Or is it a name? Was it another pet of yours? Your name is Ga'vik. Does it have something to do with your name?" She traced the outline of the animal lightly, admiring the stippled texture of the scars. Ga'vik stopped what he was doing to watch her, then shifted his chest slowly back, away from her fingers.

"Ga," he said again, and pointed with his knife to Lujin, sleeping in the shade. He turned the knife to point it at himself. "Ga… vik." His cobalt eyes regarded her steadily. Litha found his expression unreadable, but she enjoyed being the centre of his attention. _Again_, she thought to herself, _something I never thought I'd want from a troll!_

"Oh, so it _does _have something to do with your name." She smiled brightly at him. "Is it your totem animal, or something like that, or does it just mean you're Lujin's bitch?" She giggled, feeling giddy, and hoping her jokes sounded funnier to someone who didn't speak Common.

The troll only blinked slowly, watching her giggle, until she felt herself blush and had to look away. When she looked back, he had returned to Eikahe's shape.

She let him finish in silence, feeling awkward, but wanting to see the end result. When he had completed the outline of the bear, he carefully wrapped his forearm in a snug layer of hyena skin, then sat back to look at her.

"Yours are prettier than mine," she said, unable to stop herself. She looked down at her leg and ran a hand over the ridges and whorls. "Do you think I should have gone for a different pattern? Maybe a cat, like yours. What do you think my totem animal is?"

The troll looked down at her leg, then bent closer to examine the area that had healed most recently. It was still scabbed, but dry, and did not bleed or ooze anymore. He reached out a finger to trace it lightly as she had done to him. It made her shiver.

He said something in Orcish, but she couldn't follow it. Finally he just said, a little tentatively, "Good?" Litha only shrugged. No, it wasn't really good. She did not have the words to describe how _not good_ it was… in any language.

"I guess it's healed okay. I don't think I'll be wearing a short skirt anytime soon, though," she said at last. "Actually, maybe I should consider wearing _some_ kind of clothes." She waved her hand at him, trying to indicate his own garb.

She did not think he understood what she'd said, though he watched her speak with that intense, blue gaze. Later, when she came back from another dip in the stream, wrapped again in the thin cloak, she was surprised to find him cutting one of the hyena skins into shapes that looked remarkably like small-human-sized trousers.

"Come," he grunted, and waved her over with the knife. When she came to stand near him, he reached up to place both hand around her waist, then her hips, tutting and clicking his teeth thoughtfully. He bent back to the shapes he was making, measured along the waist with outstretched hands, then trimmed them a little.

She fed a few sticks into the fire and sat to watch him work again.

"It's been a while since I've worn anything with legs," she said. The sack-like dress had been her uniform with the goblins, and as a novice Priest she had worn a loose, chaste robe. At the orphanage, the girls mostly wore well-patched hand-me-down dresses. It was difficult to tell them from the boys, otherwise, with their hair cut short from the lice.

"Are you going to make me some sort of top, as well? May I make a request?" Litha felt increasingly bold around the troll. Getting to her feet, she twirled suddenly, clutching the cloak tightly at her throat but letting it swirl around her legs. It was relatively painless to move now, but the freshly scarred tissue of her left leg still felt oddly sensitive. "I'd like something in mageweave. Green, if possible. It goes with my eyes, you know." She twirled slowly around the campsite until she felt dizzy. More softly, she said, "I'd like to wear something pretty, for a change. I'm sure you know how it is."

When she glanced back at the troll, he had stopped what he was doing and was watching her. Caught out, he clicked his teeth, ruffled his hair, and turned back to the leather.

"You're allowed to look. Everyone else does. At least, I'm sure they would if they were travelling with a naked woman. Besides, what have I got to hide?" She let the cloak fall open.

He troll bent closer to his work, concentrating all of his focus on drawing the knife through the leather. Litha sighed. She sensed an attraction there, but she wasn't sure if it was his, or just her own. She hadn't had someone take care of her for… well, not like _this_, ever. She liked the feeling, which was dangerous. She must not become complacent.

For all she knew, he was a genuinely nice… _troll_. Nice, and resisting his attraction to her because he felt guilty about turning her back over to the goblins. Or eating her. One of which was definitely going to happen.

Litha strongly suspected the first one, but had not completely ruled out the second. She had not ruled out the idea of seducing him, either. Maybe, if she made herself irresistible, he would just keep her. That would not be so bad, other than his cooking. Maybe she would do the cooking.

If she could only stay out of goblin hands long enough, eventually she might make her way to an Alliance base…

"Will you hum for me, again? That was nice. You seemed… so relaxed and happy. I think you like the forest." To encourage him, Litha tried humming a short stretch of the tune he had produced when they first arrived. It was difficult, as it had seemed to change with each verse, but Litha was quite good at remembering and repeating musical phrases. It helped her to learn new spells. It was all in the timing and intonation.

Ga'vik stopped again to look up at her, eyes wide. He spoke in Zandali and then, to Litha's surprise, sang a short stretch of the tune. It had lyrics, evidently, and he seemed to be asking if Litha knew the whole song.

"I've never heard it before," she told him. "Just when you hummed it. Will you sing it all?"

He stared at her silently and blinked slowly, an expression that Litha decided to translate as bewilderment.

Taking a deep breath, Litha launched into her own rendition of the tune, trying to imitate the Zandali phonetically. The emphasis on vowels and the cadence reminded her of the Night Elf's language.

She was rewarded with a bark of laughter from the troll. He shook his head, grinning at her, tried to speak, and broke into laughter again.

"Well, you haven't really been trying to learn _my _language," she retorted, feeling herself blush, again. "If you hadn't had that little eulogy for Eikahe, I might think you only knew a dozen words altogether." The troll fell into silence again once his laughter subsided. He turned back to the leather. He wanted her covered up, apparently, as soon as possible.

Dejected, Litha moved away, hugging the cloak around herself. She crouched in front of the fire and remembered songs she used to sing as a child. One of them, she recalled, prominently featured a blood-thirsty, child-eating troll. _The truth is worse, _she decided, feeling sullen, though she could not entirely admit to herself _why _she was so upset.

When the troll began to sing again, softly, she felt an up-welling of warmth. She held very still until he had finished the line, afraid that he would stop. Instead, he paused at the end, then repeated the same line over again. He did it a third time before Litha understood.

She repeated it after him. He sang it again, and they echoed it back and forth until he seemed satisfied with her rendition, and abruptly began the next line.

Time passed swiftly during the game, and Litha became so involved in the imitation of his lilting rhythm that she jumped when he tapped her on the shoulder as she was working her way through the second verse.

He handed her the leather trousers, smiling, and gestured for her to put them on. Feeling suddenly shy, Litha turned away from him to dress behind the cover of the cloak. The trousers were fitted with leather laces up both legs, and she was surprised to find that they gaped a little along the outside of each hip and thigh, revealing a stretch of smooth skin crisscrossed with laces on the right, and hideously scarred flesh on the left. It took her a few minutes of fiddling with the ties to realize that the waistline fit perfectly, and that the skin-baring seemed intentional.

Turning back to Ga'vik, she pointed to her scarred leg with an expression of distaste.

"You didn't have to be so stingy with the material," she said. She got the slow blink in response. "It's not exactly my best feature." She pointed again to the ugly scars, then flattened her hand over the gap to mime covering them.

Without speaking, the troll leaned forward, took her hand gently, and moved it away. He pointed to the gap and spoke in Zandali. The phrase had a measured rhythm to it, and he said it with such intensity that Litha repeated it. Ga'vik nodded solemnly.

"You're an odd one, alright," she said at last, but did not try to cover the scars again.

He made a sort of top for her, as well, though it was little more than a short vest with laces up the front that left little to the imagination. When he made a small patchwork satchel with the scraps of leather and a bit of reptile hide, Litha decided he _was _being stingy, but couldn't really complain. The nights were much cooler here than in Tanaris, and she appreciated that he hadn't used all of the hyena skins. It was nice to have a bedroll.

Ga'vik also spent some time equipping himself with a small supply of arrows, made roughly from straight branches, tips hardened in the fire. Litha woke one morning to the soft _zip, thuck _of his practice shots. When she rose to join him, he spoke briefly and pointed gravely toward the crater.

Litha understood. The holiday was over; they were moving on.


	13. 13: Ga'vik and the Boar

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

Ga'vik led them in a northwesterly direction, hugging the rim of the crater. They were headed toward Silithus. Another loa-forsaken desert crawling with bugs was the last place he wanted to go, really, but the options were limited. He had considered heading for Marshal's Stand, but the human might be recognized by the goblins there, even if they didn't yet know about the attack in Tanaris. What's more, Ga'vik himself was likely considered MIA by his Horde superiors at the moment, and was disinclined to let word reach them of his true, AWOL status.

The troll had been mulling over his options in that regard. He had doubts about the war, certainly, and he had made himself unpopular with his tribe, his comrades, and his chiefs, but he had no intention of becoming a _deserter_. Where would he go? What would he do?

As a hunter, he enjoyed long stretches of solitude. He could live off the land for weeks or months with no friendly contact beyond the non-judgemental companionship of his pet and his mount. Actually, Lujin clearly _did _judge him, but at least she couldn't put her derisive thoughts into words.

At some point, though, Ga'vik would want to head into town for supplies, a drink, for a conversation or a fuck. He could imagine being sentenced to death for his actions, but that thought was not as daunting as being exiled from all of civilization. If the Horde wouldn't have him, the Alliance certainly wouldn't welcome him with open arms.

No need to get ahead of himself, though. There would be plenty of time to consider his new, lonely life, once he was actually _alone_.

Resolutely, he forced himself to consider the human, and _her _future. If he were able to get her into Silithus, he could deposit her at Cenarion Hold. Eikahe had (or _had _had) friends among the druids, there. The troll could recall a few names. He wondered if they would be able to remove her collar, or if they would have qualms about freeing a slave. Eikahe had been a sentimental sort, even a romantic, in his celibate way. Other druids might not be so indulgent.

How had she come to be a slave, anyway? An attractive young female in slavery was little more than an unpaid prostitute, as far as Ga'vik understood. He scowled and clicked his teeth at the thought of goblins… _ugh_. Why would she put herself in that position, unless she were already a prostitute, perhaps with great debts? An addiction of some sort? Ga'vik rubbed his hair uncomfortably at the thought. Maybe she had sold herself to pay for the misdeeds of a loved one? That was a more charitable explanation, though it still didn't feel right, to him.

The troll considered what he knew of the girl. She was tough, that much was clear. She seemed unfazed by her own change in circumstances, his acquisition of her, or even by her own defenseless nudity. She could be stubborn and independent, and this morning had insisted on climbing onto Jozala unaided, though it had taken much scrambling and reopened a scab on her burnt leg. Her eyes held grief and grim acceptance, and spoke of untold horrors witnessed and withstood.

Ga'vik appreciated these aspects of her personality. Her grit would make it easier for him to get her to safety, and complete the implicit quest from Eikahe.

There was another side to her, though, that left him confused and uncomfortable. He had been on the receiving end of sexual advances before, but never from a human. Troll females were direct to the point of aggression. Ga'vik might have been less confounded if Litha had pursued the same tactic. Instead, she flirted endlessly: dancing and touching, fluttering her eyelashes, feigning innocence even as she provoked him, and generally projecting an air of sensual naiveté. It left the troll feeling both aroused and thoroughly disarmed, despite himself.

The conflicting signals screamed of a _trap_, to Ga'vik, though he wasn't sure if it was intentionally set by the human, or if he was misreading her. He considered himself experienced with females, but had always known sex as a simple give-and-take: it was desired by both sides (with or without the added tenderness of romantic love), agreed upon after a brief negotiation (verbal or nonverbal), and undertaken with enthusiasm. He was not sure if the human desired him, or merely wanted _him_ to desire _her_.

The troll had decided that either Litha did not know_ what_ she desired, or that human sexuality was impossibly complex. Probably both.

Ga'vik cast a glance at the human from the corner of his eye. She was riding Jo as he walked, sitting straight in the rough leather saddle he had fashioned. She was gazing around with wide eyes, their lush mixed gold-green-brown flecks even brighter than the foliage around them. She had been giving a running commentary in her own tongue, as far as he could tell. He had not acknowledged her Common babbling, but had felt a little slighted when she had switched her attention to Lujin and Jozala.

The human seemed taken with the scenery, and Ga'vik could not blame her. The occasional vicious reptile or bloodpetal aside, he felt much more at home in the wet, green crater than he ever felt in the desert. The density of life provided both shelter and sustenance for a hunter. He kept the pace steady but not rushed as they traveled. He and Lujin hunted leisurely, collecting meat, skins, and anything else they found.

He had fled the camp site in Tanaris with little more than his weapons and the clothes on his back, and the human had not even had that much. By the time they reached Silithus, Ga'vik would have plenty of skins, handmade leather goods, and other trinkets to sell. Once he had sent the human safely on her way, he could replace most of the things he had lost.

Other than Eikahe, of course. That loss could not be replaced. It would heal, but would leave a scar.

"_By your scars, the loas will know you," _Ga'vik murmured to himself, brushing his fingers over the stippled bear shape on his forearm. He glanced again at the human, eyeing the mottled pink swirls of her left thigh, visible through the lacing of her leather pants.

He did not really believe in the loas, of course - another of his failings as a troll. As a child he had expressed his doubts to his older brother, who had advised him to keep them to himself, though he had not seemed as perturbed as he would later, when Ga'vik admitted to his political beliefs.

_You worry things with your mind like a pup with a bone, until a thing that was smooth and solid is splintered and broken_, his brother had said, _and then you cut yourself with the shards_. Ga'vik knew it was a warning, but could not help but respond, _How else to reach the marrow?_

Still, he had taken some of the religious teachings to heart. Scars were a source of pride among his people: hard-won, even more so than among the Orcs and the other slow-healers.

Litha's scars had been hard-won as well. Ga'vik had watched in awe as her body had fought for every inch of thin, newly-formed skin.

If the loas were out there, they would surely be impressed.

* * *

Ga'vik had begun looking forward to the evenings.

In the mornings, he would would wake in the dim predawn light, well before the human. She would not open her eyes until the sun was up, and would remain sullen and groggy for hours. After a little hunting or fishing, Ga'vik would would ply the female with a bit of food and weak tea. Eventually, she would rise from her sleeping skin, yawning and tousled, and grudgingly allow him to boost her onto the raptor, or follow him on foot for a ways, if the terrain was not too rough.

In the evenings, Ga'vik felt tired and sluggish. The human, though, would be perky and attentive. She had taken to cooking their evening meals, and never seemed to burn anything. She would chatter endlessly in her smooth, lyrical way, occasionally including an Orcish word he recognized.

"Good, yes, Ga'vik?" she would ask, holding out a second helping of baked salmon. Or, "Water, Ga'vik?" while offering the water skin. It still unnerved him when she spoke his name, and she seemed to use it at every opportunity. "Stop, Ga'vik." "Thank you, Ga'vik." "Goodnight, Ga'vik." He thought perhaps she was teasing him, because he was unable to pronounce her name.

She would often help with Jozala, tossing down the saddle and pile of collected skins before scrubbing the raptor's scales with a handful of moss. Jo would chirrup and nuzzle at the human as Ga'vik rested his feet by the fire. The panther, too, was on the receiving end of coddling and petting from the human in the evenings. Lujin tolerated it with surprising self-restraint.

Often, as they were settling down for the evening, Litha would hum or sing the song he'd taught her. It made him smile every time, which he was sure was encouraging her, though he felt a queer sense of guilt as well. "Raca and the Boar" was a bawdy drinking ballad about a huntress and her pet. He had been surprised with how quickly she'd picked up the tune, and even though she stumbled a bit over the unfamiliar words, they were clear enough in all their ribald glory.

"_Raca was a youngling when she tamed him, and he, a piglet at the teat," _the human would croon as she was grooming Jo, _"__Raca was a woman when she took him, and he, a boar in heat."_

One warm, misty afternoon as Ga'vik fished in a small stream, she'd sat beside him, dangling her toes in the burbling water and plucking the petals off a flower. The sight of her wholesome expression, lashes brushing her rosy, freckled-smattered cheeks as she sang, _"__Long and hard were his tusks, spearing his prey for Raca. Long and hard was his cock, spearing Raca as his prey," _had Ga'vik heaving with suppressed laughter.

Finally, as Litha reached the part of the song where Raca has piglets, Ga'vik was unable to contain himself.

"Stop," he begged in Orcish, shaking his head wildly and choking with laughter. She stopped immediately, and looked up at him, wide-eyed, as he gasped for breath.

"Stop, I be teachin' you som'ting else, girl," he got out at last.

He looked down at her dainty, upturned face, and his laughter died as abruptly as it had started. Suddenly, he could think of nothing but love songs and the soft, full curve of her lower lip. It was no longer cracked and raw as it had been in the desert, but silky smooth and _perfect_. Ga'vik's tri-fingered hand itched to reach out and feel the texture of it.

"Stop," he said again, suddenly breathless for a different reason. He felt dizzy as the blood left his brain for destinations South. He was not sure if he was ordering his own shameless body to stop responding to her, or asking her to stop… doing_ what?_ Looking at him? Swallowing hard, he dropped into a crouch to hide the evidence of his sudden arousal.

"Stop," she repeated innocently, in Zandali, and Ga'vik realized he must of changed languages in his distraction.

After a moment's hesitation, he replied in Orcish, "Stop," then again in Zandali, "Stop."

The human's eyes widened further in understanding, and she repeated the word more slowly, watching him nod.

"Yeah," he said in his rough Orcish, then in Zandali, "Yes." She echoed him, and they followed the same pattern as they had with the song. He would repeat the word back until he was satisfied with her pronunciation, then move on to a new word. She was quick to learn, and gave the Zandali words an exotic sing-song lilt.

As Ga'vik felt his blood cooling and his brain clearing, he realized what he was doing. Was he really going to teach Zandali to a human? As if freeing a goblin slave wasn't enough; surely _this_ was treason. The troll rephrased his thoughts even as they came to him. Really, he hadn't exactly freed her, just… _recovered _her from the burnt caravan, and hadn't yet returned her. Plus, she already knew some Orcish, through no fault of his own.

At least when she was distracted, she was not flirting with him. That decided it, then. He worked steadily through the Orcish terms he had heard her use, then translated when she began to supply her own. She knew some colours, the numbers one through twelve (except for eight, which she stumbled over, but that was an easy fix), and some simple nouns: dwelling, male, female, war.

When they had exhausted her small Orcish vocabulary, she began eagerly pointing to things around them. "Rock," he pronounced dutifully, "Ground… no, dirt. Water. Grass. Flower. Tree," then, "Eye. Tusk. Ear. Nose. Hand."

The rapid-fire vocabulary lesson continued through the day, though Ga'vik was certain she could not absorb so much, so quickly. She would, at times, go back over words he had already taught her, and he allowed her to set the pace, repeating words patiently back to her when she stumbled.

"_Boar_," she blurted suddenly in Zandali, after a brief silence. He glanced down at her in surprise. They were picking their way slowly through the tar pits, and though Ga'vik had spotted several tar beasts, he knew there were no boars within sight.

"_Boar_," she said insistently, and sang, "_Raca and the boar, Raca and the boar, they fought back-to-back, they fucked tusk-to-tusk, did Raca and the boar_."

Ga'vik stopped in his tracks and ran a hand through his hair, clicking his teeth. After a moment's indecision, during which he looked desperately to Lujin for a distraction (she merely sat and began to groom her hindquarters, refusing to meet his gaze), he dropped into a crouch and drew his dagger. He sketched a rough boar outline in the damp soil.

The human stared at it so long, her normally smooth brow drawn into furrows of concentration, that Ga'vik made an oinking sound just to break the silence. Litha laughed.

"Boar," she repeated, and oinked back at him. He nodded, smiling, and started to rise.

"_Fucked_," she asked.

Ga'vik clicked his teeth again and had to look away. He settled back into a crouch and sighed, staring at the picture of the boar he had made. Surely she hadn't learned enough Zandali already to suss out the theme of the song… had she? The troll ruffled his hair again.

"Raca," he stated at last, and started to draw a troll figure next to the boar.

She cut him off. "Female," she said easily, and dropped to crouch in front of him. She used the tip of her tiny pink finger to trace feminine curves on the shape he had started. "_Fucked_?" she pointed to the boar.

Ga'vik lifted his face to hers. She was squatting less deeply than he, so her green eyes were almost level with his tusks. They were partially hidden behind her long, thick lashes, but the troll could see now that they sparked with mischief. She was pursing her pink lips, and her freckled cheeks were tight with suppressed laughter.

She already knew what the word meant, or at least suspected, and she was teasing him.

Scowling in a way that had caused several of his enemies to soil themselves in battle, Ga'vik deliberately held up one hand between them, touching the finger-tips together to form an open slit, then brought his skinning knife up and thrust it into the slit.

Litha giggled at his rude gesture and at his discomfiture, and bending forward, redrew the female troll figure and the boar in a very compromising position.

"_The boar fucked Raca_," she said in her sing-song way.

"Yes, the boar fucked Raca; they were fucking; to fuck: he fucks, she fucks, everyone fucks." Ga'vik grunted. He was not sure if this episode meant he was an excellent teacher, or a terrible one. He sheathed his skinning knife and straightened.

The human looked up at him impishly, crouched beside her drawing. She had continued to braid her hair to either side of her face, with increasing success as the burnt clumps grew in and smoothed out. She had filled out a bit more since they'd been in Un'Goro; her cheekbones were high and her eyes were large and wide-set, but she no longer had the sharp, gaunt look of a famine victim. The leather vest he had given her did nothing to hide the soft curves of her small breasts, and only emphasized the flat, narrow plane of her belly and the feminine flare of her hips.

Ga'vik thought she looked lovelier every day, and her increasingly bold behaviour was even more dangerous.

"Come," he said in Zandali, the heat in his gut making him feel reckless, "I've got to get rid of you before I'm truly fucked."


	14. 14: Litha is reminded

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

Litha was delighted and relieved to be on the receiving end of Ga'vik's language lessons. He always made sure she was fed, clothed, and safe, but had remained aloof since that first night in the crater. Though he had taught her the song about Raca, he had done it without even making eye contact. As soon as she had learned the song to his satisfaction, he had resumed silent gesturing and occasional grunting as his sole forms of communication.

His impromptu lesson in Zandali was a breakthrough, seemingly brought on by the troll's chagrin at having taught her that filthy song. Litha was elated to have drawn him into a conversation, of sorts, and to be paving the way for _more_ communication. Orcish seemed to be a lost cause – Litha knew little enough, but when the troll spoke it, he cut off or garbled so many syllables that Litha could barely understand the words she _did_ know.

She hoped he wasn't teaching her some sort of pidgin Zandali, as well.

Regardless, she _would_ learn it, and she would make him talk to her. How else could she convince him not to return her to the goblins? So far, he seemed staunchly resistant to her attempts to seduce him, though she did catch him watching her, from time to time. She had more trouble translating his facial expressions than she did the song. His eyes were very expressive, but evasive when Litha tried to meet them. The troll's mouth was generally drawn into a scowl by his tusks, even when she assumed he was actually relaxed, or even amused. When she spoke to him in Common, he would usually reply with a single, slow blink, before resuming whatever he had been doing. _Strong, silent, and impenetrable, _Litha thought.

She practiced her Zandali at every opportunity.

"Ga'vik and Lujin to hunt," she pronounced, unsure if the word she used meant _hunt_, or _kill_, "…the …beast?"

Ga'vik sighed, and lowered his bow. He had been holding it taut with an arrow nocked. Litha knew she was interrupting him, but found that was often the best way to get his attention. He clicked his teeth and rolled his shoulders before turning to her. She feigned an innocent expression, widening her eyes.

His own eyes narrowed. "Yes, I am hunting with Lujin," he enunciated slowly, "We are hunting the tar beast."

Litha waited until he had turned back and started to raise the bow again, before asking, "Tar?" She had guessed the meaning, but was pleased when he used a two-toed foot to indicate a puddle of the black, gooey substance.

"Tar. _This_ is tar. _That_ is a tar beast. I _something_ _something_ tar beast." Litha didn't recognize _something_ _something_. She carefully repeated the new words back to him.

The troll huffed and rumpled his hair, then held up his bow with one hand and gestured emphatically at it with the other, repeating the phrase.

"Shoot it with an arrow?" Litha guessed, in Common. She lifted her own hands to pantomime drawing a bow string back, and firing.

He grunted in assent, then motioned for her to be silent, and turned back toward his quarry. She watched his shoulders flex to the point of maximum draw before she spoke once more.

"Ga'vik shoot with arrow the tar beast," she assured him loudly, biting her lip as the arrow soared wildly over the tar beast's head. This time, it was harder to hide her smirk when he whirled to face her. She fluttered her eyelashes and cocked her head to one side as he flashed his pointed teeth at her in frustration. She smiled warmly back at him.

"Li… you. Quiet. Please," he ground out. She nodded silently, still smiling. This time, as he slowly turned away, drawing another arrow, he glanced back at her several times, the muscles along his jaw twitching. Just to keep him on his toes, she decided not to interrupt again.

Intellectually, she knew that teasing a troll was probably a _bad idea_. He was, after all, an imposing seven-foot figure of solid green muscle and tusks, clearly lethal with knife or bow, undoubtedly filled with hatred of the Alliance and cannibalistic urges.

It was a good way to get his attention, though. Besides - despite what Litha had heard about the more primitive Horde races, Ga'vik seemed to have the patience of an elekk. Litha could not resist the urge to test his limits. She was annoyed, too, at his apparent indifference to her flirtation, and would do almost anything to get a rise out of him, though she knew she was acting the child.

After Ga'vik had slain the tar beast, Litha drew him into some Zandali revision, trying to make a game of it.

"Black," she said, and pointed at the tar, "The tar is black. The leaf is green," and picked up a leaf. Then, "Blue," and waited. She repeated the word several times before Ga'vik, with a slow blink, pointed up to the sky.

"Yes," she said. "You now."

He was walking beside Jozala, as usual, and his expression was unreadable to the human. Litha had just begun to suspect that he didn't know what she intended, when he clicked his teeth and glanced toward the raptor.

"Red," he said. Litha immediately leaned forward to pat the beast's neck, eliciting a cheerful squawk.

"Jozala is red," she replied easily. "What is white?"

The troll looked at her sidelong before turning to grin savagely at her. He seemed to have an excess of teeth when he peeled his lips back. His tusks extended down as far as his chin before hooking upward to lethal points. Litha thought they grew from his top jaw, but could not quite see. She was leaning in for a closer look, hand extended to check, when he threw his head back and barked with laughter.

"Teeth are white," he pointed to show what 'teeth' meant, "and you are…" He said a word Litha didn't know. She didn't think it was a colour.

She sat back on Jozala, feeling a little embarrassed that she'd been about to touch the troll's teeth. "What is _that_?"

The troll turned and began to walk away. Jozala followed obediently. After a moment, Ga'vik seemed to have gathered his thoughts, and stopped to face her.

"Eikahe is… was _that_," he said. Litha frowned, thinking of all the things Eikahe had been. She doubted that the troll had called her big, or hairy, or strong. Ga'vik had clearly liked Eikahe, so Litha decided the comparison was probably a flattering one.

"I am brave," she guessed in Common, then made a show of flexing her arms and trying to look tough. The troll looked doubtful, but merely grunted at her display. He turned to walk away again.

"Ga'vik is brave," Litha said, hoping to keep the conversation going. The troll grunted again, but shook his head as he did so.

"I am not brave. I am…" another strange Zandali word, "like Lujin." To demonstrate, the troll walked to the panther, and moved to block her path. The big cat tried to manoeuvre around him, growling low in her throat as he stepped to stand in front of her again. When she tried to dash to one side, he crouched to loop an arm around her chest, trying to hold her still. She yowled and leapt backward, swatting at him. When Ga'vik shifted to let her by, she moved just past him, then sat abruptly and regarded him with baleful golden eyes.

Litha couldn't help laughing. "I think you mean stubborn," she said in Common, "but you might mean disobedient."

Ga'vik flashed his teeth again in a quick grin, and reached to scratch Lujin's head. She ducked away from him with a hiss and stalked off, her tail flicking angrily.

Litha laughed again. "You are stubborn," she said, trying the new Zandali word, "to keep Lujin."

Ga'vik didn't grin at her this time, but his blue eyes still looked amused. He mimed the act of _giving_ with cupped hands as he explained, "Lujin was a _gift_ from Eikahe."

Litha snorted. "Eikahe was good…" she searched her new vocabulary, then resorted to the Orcish word for _friend_.

"Yes," Ga'vik said solemnly. He gave her the Zandali word for friend. As he started walking again, he traced the scarred shape of the bear on his forearm with one finger.

Litha hesitated before pointing to his chest and shoulders, where she knew that other figures were hidden under his leather and mail armour. "Other friends?"

Ga'vik looked wary. "Y-yes," he spoke slowly, "and family, and loas, and _somethings_."

Litha recognized the first two things at least, and nodded sagely. It seemed to be a sensitive subject, so she let it go.

"You have family?" the troll asked suddenly, surprising her.

"No," she replied immediately, startled into honesty. "Dead."

"Your family is all dead?" Ga'vik's blue eyes went wide.

"Yes."

"Mother and father?" Litha knew those words. This was not a subject that _she_ particularly wanted to discuss, but she tried not to be annoyed. At least he was showing an interest in her.

"Yes."

"Brothers and sisters?"

Litha hadn't heard the word for _sisters_ before, but recognized what he was asking. She confirmed they were all dead as well, though she'd only had one of each, in fact. She tried briefly to remember their faces, but she'd been so young…

He used several more words she didn't know, but which she assumed to be Zandali terms for aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, second cousins, nieces, nephews, and the like. She speculated that trolls must have large extended families.

"Yes, all dead." She didn't look at the troll, but she could feel his gaze burning into her. She patted Jozala to distract herself. The raptor cooed.

"Friends?" he asked after a long silence.

Litha sighed. "Not dead, but… not _good_ friends." She shrugged, and pointed to the slave collar to clarify. When the troll blinked slowly at her and said nothing, she added flippantly, "I have goblin friends."

Ga'vik gave a snort, but when Litha looked over at him, he did not look amused. His dark blue eyes were intense. His response was cut off by a yowl from Lujin up ahead.

They had not been traveling on a marked path, but Litha could see that they had come upon one now. There was a boulder-sized tortoise crouched at the edge of the trail like a lumpy signpost. It was stone grey. Litha thought at first it was an ugly statue until she noticed the rheumy, malevolent eyes following their movements.

Lujin was backing toward Ga'vik with her ears pressed flat. The troll stilled, drew an arrow from his quiver, and held it ready in his bow. He called out a greeting in Orcish. His tone was light, but Litha could see every muscle in his body was taut. Beneath her, Jozala crouched, coiling like a spring.

A figure stepped out of the woods. The green glow of his eyes marked him as a blood elf. He raised a hand in greeting and spoke in a trilling elven tongue. Ga'vik seemed to know a few words of the language, and used them alongside his crude Orcish. They both gesticulated – the way they had come, the way they were going, and toward Litha.

Ga'vik had dropped the arrow back into his quiver and slung his bow over his shoulder. His slouching posture seemed a little more hunched than usual, and he neither clicked his teeth nor rubbed his spiky hair. He was still on high alert, Litha realized, even as the blood elf laughed haughtily and waved at the human on the raptor.

It happened very quickly. Ga'vik seemed to be gesturing at the trail again, but was crooking his finger a little oddly, and then Lujin was on top of the elf, scrabbling at his armour with her back claws even as her jaws clamped over his face. Jozala gave a scream and lunged at the tortoise, which moved surprisingly quickly to intercede on behalf of its master. Litha was thrown off as the raptor plunged forward, but raised her head in time to see the tortoise skid to a shuddering halt with two arrows in its head and neck.

Lujin still had the blood elf locked in a bloody embrace, but Ga'vik strode quickly over to them and barked a command. Lujin released her grip immediately and stepped back. The blood elf had just enough time to raise one bloody, shaking hand, before the troll fired an arrow into his face at point-blank range.

Ga'vik braced the elf's head with his two-toed foot and pulled the arrow free again before the death throes had even subsided. He wiped it clean with the elf's cloak, and moved to the tortoise to retrieve those arrows, as well. One of them was broken, and he tossed it aside. The troll seemed to hesitate for a moment, then returned to the elf and riffled through his bags, retrieving a jingling pouch and a few smaller items. He straightened and surveyed the scene.

When he spotted Litha sprawled on the ground, her mouth agape, he moved toward her with his hand outstretched. She scrambled quickly to her feet, evading him. Suddenly, she did not want him to touch her.

Her mind was reeling. She had been getting complacent, again. She had nearly forgotten who she was traveling with. He was a member of the Horde, and a _troll_. They were all killers, rapists and cannibals. They had no honour or chivalry. Clearly, Ga'vik had no loyalty, either, as he had just killed a member of his own faction in cold blood.

Litha had seen death many times, but this was _betrayal_ – the worst kind. She thought of Darrick. Her stomach churned, and she took deep breaths to fight the sudden nausea. Ga'vik was still watching her. He tried once more to move toward her, but stopped when she waved him off, shuddering.

_No, no, no._ She had let herself trust him. She had let herself believe she was safe with him. How many times did she have to be reminded? She was safe with no-one but herself. She could trust no-one but herself.

The troll let her be, shifting his feet and scowling inscrutably in his usual way. After a few minutes, he gave a short whistle to the animals. Lujin had been carefully grooming the blood off of her whiskers, as Jozala nosed at the dead elf's pack, looking for anything edible. They both moved toward the troll dutifully as he turned and started down the trail. He made no attempt to hide the bodies of the blood elf and the tortoise.

Litha stood frozen, staring at the grisly ruin of the blood elf's handsome face. Ga'vik had killed him as swiftly and effortlessly as the tar beast, but an elf was _not_ a tar beast – in fact, since Litha had personally known several night elves, she had always considered the blood elves to be somewhat more _people_ than the troll, orc, and tauren members of the Horde.

_I still need him,_ she reminded herself, _and_ _I'm no threat to him_. The last thought was only reassuring until she tried to think of what threat the blood elf had posed. _None_. He had seemed friendly toward the troll. Litha swallowed hard as the bile rose in her throat again.

The troll stopped walking as he reached a curve in the trail, and turned to look back at her.

"Come," he said, simply.

Litha tried to move, but her legs didn't respond at first. _I still need him, _she told herself again, and, _I don't have to trust him to make use of him_.

"Come, Lid…ta." He stumbled over her name. She wasn't sure she'd ever heard him use it before. She wasn't sure what that meant. His face was blurry – everything was blurry. _Was she crying_? Litha blinked rapidly to dissipate the tears.

_I _don't_ need him_, she decided, _and I don't trust him,_ _but he hasn't hurt me yet. _Litha knew it would still be very dangerous to travel on her own, with no weapons or magic. Besides, if she did not follow him, he would probably just pick her up and put her on Jozala, or even carry her. There was no point in resisting him.

Finally, Litha managed to blink back the tears, and looked past the troll, trying to judge where they were headed. If they were leaving the crater, they must be going to Silithus. It was another bug-infested desert, but not one in which the goblins had a strong presence. She'd never been there, but she thought the neutral druid group – the Cenarion Circle – had a settlement there.

_As soon as I see night elves, I'll get away from him,_ she resolved. _I'll tell them _he's_ the one that captured me, and put this collar on me. There won't be any goblins to say otherwise._

It was not a great plan, but Litha felt better. She just needed to stay alive, and on the troll's good side, until help was within reach. She resolved to do whatever it took.

Still shaking physically but mentally composed, she started after the troll, picking her way around the gruesome corpses. She thanked the Light that the harsh reminder had been through the elf's death, and not her own.


	15. 15: Ga'vik is perplexed

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

* * *

Ga'vik watched the human warily as she made their dinner by the campfire. Something was clearly amiss. She hadn't tried to speak to him all afternoon - since the encounter with the blood elf. It was understandable that she had been frightened, but Ga'vik had eliminated the danger. There was no need for lingering apprehension.

Ga'vik was angry at himself for stumbling onto the elven hunter in the first place. He'd been distracted by his conversation with Litha, but that was no excuse. Thinking quickly, he had explained to the blood elf in a jumble of Orcish and Thalassian that he had been tracking the human slave since she escaped during a silithid attack in Tanaris. The fel-tainted elf had appeared to believe him, but had insisted that he would _assist_ in returning her.

Even before the elf had made a comment about how much _fun_ they could have with her together, Ga'vik had known he would need to kill him. Since the troll had no intention of returning Litha to the goblins, the Horde must never know of her survival.

It had not been much of a battle, really, though Lujin's efforts to kill the elf had been hampered by his heavy armour, so it had gone on several seconds longer than necessary. Ga'vik did not know how the elf could even hunt, clanking and sweating under all that metal.

Afterward, the human had seemed shaken, though she'd followed him eventually. She had been quiet and distant ever since.

Ga'vik missed her chattering. He missed her teasing smiles. He even missed the Zandali lessons.

"Lid'ta," he said, before he could stop himself. Why had he said that? He couldn't even pronounce it correctly. It did seem to get her attention, though. He hesitated. _What now?_

"…you okay?" he asked at last, regretting his choice as soon as the words left his mouth. The question was wholly inadequate.

The little human pinned him with a stare, the firelight catching the gold flecks in her eyes. Her cheeks were ruddy from the warmth of the fire, and she held his skinning knife in one hand, the curved blade gleaming red. In her other hand she held a carved hunk of meat, dripping blood. Ga'vik thought she looked exquisite. His heart began to pound.

"Okay," she replied softly, her face a mask. She smelled of fear and anger.

"Not okay," he snapped. "You," he pointed at her, "are clearly _not_ okay. What is it? Why are you so upset?" He flung out his hands, palms upward. "Is this about the blood elf?"

When the human gave no response, he wasn't sure whether she was ignoring him, or if she didn't understand his questions. He was suddenly frustrated beyond reason. He huffed and ground his teeth, thinking hard. _Fucking language barrier._

"The _Sin'dorei_… I killed the Sin'dorei. Is that what's bothering you?" The human glanced up at the Thalassian term, her lips pressed tightly together. She was chopping up some roots, her movements jerky. The troll was certain she was going to cut off one of her fingers (_how could she keep track of so many, anyway?_), but instead there was only a steady production of neatly cubed tubers. She still did not speak.

"The loa-damned Sin'dorei are all treacherous, and _that_ one wanted to rape you. If he didn't fucking kill you, he was definitely going to turn you in to the goblins. Do you want to go back to the goblins?" Ga'vik emphasized his question by pointing to her slave collar, which made the human flinch. This made him even angrier.

"What have I ever done to make you think I would hurt you? I fucking _saved_ you." The troll stood up, gnashing his teeth. He hunched over her, fists clenched, fuming, knowing he was irrationally upset but feeling even more offended by her continued silence. She was not even looking at him, now.

Finally, he snarled in irritation and turned away, sliding both hands through his hair to calm himself. After a moment, he heard soft footsteps behind him. When he turned back, she was much closer.

Litha had removed her top, and was unlacing the sides of her trousers. While he stared at her in consternation, she stepped delicately out of them, folded them, and placed them on the ground beside his bedroll. She stepped closer still, and laid a hand on his forearm. The touch was as light as a butterfly through his leather bracers and mail shirt.

Ga'vik moved his mouth wordlessly. He was a little baffled by the sudden development, but his body responded immediately. This was the type of overture he would expect from a troll female, and was much clearer to him than Litha's usual, coy flirtations. One of his hands came up of its own accord to press a braid back from her face. There was a ringing in his ears. He leaned down and kissed her, lightly at first: a chaste brush of his lips over hers, carefully angling his head so as not to touch her with his tusks.

The ringing grew louder as she pressed closer to him, shifting up onto her toes to kiss him back. The hand on his forearm clutched a little more urgently, and Litha brought her other hand up to flutter over his tusk, his jaw, his ear, before settling on his shoulder.

Ga'vik discovered his own hands were on her waist. They circled it nearly completely. He brought one up along the smooth expanse of her back, trailing his fingers over the slight bumps of her spine as he traced its curves. His other hand crept lower, cupping the softer curve of her bum. Her skin felt like silk. He groaned.

His kisses became less restrained as he let his head tilt, one tusk dipping down to press into her shoulder, the other skimming her cheek. He pressed his tongue against her lips and they opened easily. Her mouth was hot and wet.

She drew back a little, still clutching at him, drawing him down to the bedroll. He practically fell on top of her, one knee between her legs. Propping himself on an elbow, he let a three-fingered hand drift over one small breast. He could feel her nipple, hard, against his palm. He rained kisses over her face, her tiny shell ear, and down her neck.

When his lips brushed the slave collar, he felt a jolt like lightening. He was not sure if it was real, or merely his imagination, but he jerked his head back at the shock, and pulled away. He blinked several times to clear the haze in his mind. Each time he opened his eyes, he nearly lost himself again to the image of her naked body stretched beneath him, her pink lips open and her legs spread. He closed his eyes completely and forced himself to take deep breaths. He sat back on his haunches. When he opened his eyes again, she had rolled onto her knees, biting her lower lip, her ass lifted suggestively in the air.

He could smell her, though, and as soon as he stopped touching her, he could hear what his brain was trying to tell him. She smelled of sex, yes - sweet and _female_ and terribly arousing, but she also reeked of fear. Even more than she had a few minutes ago.

_She's a slave_, Ga'vik reminded himself. _As brave as she is, she is still afraid of me. I killed a man in front of her, I shouted at her, and she is trying to appease me._

Feeling suddenly ill, he pulled away from her and snatched up her trousers. He held them out to her, unable to meet her eyes. He resisted the urge to stuff her forcibly into them.

"Lid'ta," he rumbled, looking away but still smelling the fear and shame pouring off of her in waves, "I don't want… this. Or, I do, but not like _this_. You don't have to… I am not going to hurt you." He finally managed to look at her.

She hadn't put the trousers on, but was hugging them to her breasts, still folded. Her freckles stood out against her pale face, and her eyes shone with confusion. She was sitting up slowly, curling her legs protectively to one side.

"Fuck. You loa-damned _idiot_, troll." Ga'vik ground his teeth. Standing, he moved to retrieve her top as well, and brought it over to her. She was still huddled on his bedroll, but now there were tears brimming in her eyes. The troll hadn't seen her cry before, and the sight made him feel wretched.

"Don't do that. Don't… there's no need. Fuck." As the tears began to stream down her face, he reached out to wipe them away, and she flinched again, making him feel even worse. She made no move to dress herself, so the troll tugged his cloak out of one of the travel bags.

"Lid'ta… fuck. Look… here. Just… you won't feel so naked, if you're not naked. Plus, it's hard to look at you. In a good way. Well, no… in a bad way." He sighed, and draped the cloak around her shoulders, tugging it closed at the front. She continued to cry silently, staring at her lap.

He didn't try to touch her, but shifted carefully to sit beside her on the bedroll, murmuring any soft words that came to mind, many of them curses. He did not think she was listening to him, even if she could understand what he was saying, so he inserted some choice comments about Eikahe, the loa-damned _cow_ that had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

"Listen, you don't really know the plan, do you? I'm just some crazy troll, dragging you halfway across Kalimdor, and you've just been… playing along. You seemed so calm about everything; I didn't really try to explain to you… _fuck_."

He looked at her sidelong. She looked very, very small, all balled up with the cloak pooled around her. The tears were still coursing down her cheeks. The tip of her nose and gone red, and it was starting to run. She made no move to wipe it, but sniffed once, discreetly.

"Lid'ta, look at me." When she didn't move, he repeated it more firmly. She turned timidly toward him, gazing up through long lashes beaded with tears. He spoke slowly, trying to make his point clear with facial expressions and hand gestures. "The Sin'dorei wanted to take you back to the goblins. I am _not_ taking you back to the goblins. I am taking you to the Cenarion Circle… the druids. So they can free you. Okay?" He hesitated, then added, "It's what Eikahe wanted," since it felt wrong to take all the credit.

The human's chin tilted up so she was looking at him more directly. "Free?" she repeated, watching him carefully. The troll tried to look as honest and nonthreatening as his tusks would allow. He brought both hands to his throat to grasp an imaginary slave collar, then pulled them down and apart violently.

"_Free_," he said, "Not a slave."

Litha's mouth dropped open as she stared at him. "The Cenarion… Circle?"

"I hope so," he replied. He was not at all certain that they would help, actually, but he didn't have any better ideas. Besides, his bags were nearly full and he needed to find a trading post.

The human used his cloak to wipe her nose, looking thoughtful. At last she asked, very tentatively, "When?"

Ga'vik was immensely relieved that the crying had subsided. "One or two days. We'll reach Valor's Rest first – we won't really be able to avoid it – and then on to Cenarion Hold. I can give you gold," he held up the blood elf's jingling purse, "You could fly wherever you like. From Teldrassil, you could take a ship to Azeroth, I think."

The human continued to stare at him, sniffing occasionally. Ga'vik thought the snottiness detracted only a little from her beauty. He shook himself and stood.

"Right… well, I'll finish dinner, shall I?" He started toward the abandoned pile of meat and vegetables, but Litha made a small squeak of protest and stood. She shifted in the cloak uncertainly, glancing down at herself.

"Yes, you're still naked under there," Ga'vik said gently, trying very hard _not_ to remember what that looked like. "If my cooking's that bad, though, I'll leave you to it." He sat on the far side of the fire and kept his eyes pointedly averted as she tried to look dignified, dressing herself under the cloak.

She remained very quiet as she finished cooking their dinner, but when she brought him a portion, she used his name, and offered a shy smile. They ate in silence, tidied the camp, and retired to separate bedrolls.

When Ga'vik awoke the next morning, Litha and Jozala were both gone.


	16. 16: Litha & Ga'vik

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

_Author's note: This is a short chapter (actually, two very short chapters), so I'm uploading another tonight, as well. I hope you enjoy them!_

* * *

Litha was gliding through the air. Jozala's long strides ate up the hard-packed trail, her neck extended forward, nostrils flaring. The only sounds were the rhythmic thudding of the raptor's two-toed feet and the steady whistling of the cool night wind as they hurtled through it. The breeze was dry and smelled increasingly of dust and sand, but Litha thought it smelled like freedom.

It had been so much easier than she'd anticipated. Jozala had chirruped sleepily as she'd put the saddle on her, but hadn't protested in any real way. Lujin had simply watched, eyes glowing keenly in the dying firelight, whiskers and tail twitching, but had made no move to intervene. The troll had slept like the dead, as usual, one long green arm flung over his face.

Now, the human and her pilfered mount were racing through the darkness, the bright moon lighting their path, the stars whirling overhead. Litha hoped they were headed in the right direction.

She had tried to escape from the goblins many, many times. Her attempts had never been successful for more than a few minutes. As time went on, the efforts had been fewer and farther between. She had learned to balance the likelihood of a plan's success against the severity of the punishment she would receive. With an increasing number of failures under her belt, she'd grown more cautious, but had not given up altogether. She had been biding her time until they were within reach of an Alliance settlement.

The troll, however, had seemed oblivious to her scheming. Many nights she had laid awake, prodding at the fire with a stick, watching him sleep and making plans. She had even practiced approaching and grooming Jozala in the dead of night – the raptor was compliant and trusting. Jo was used to being groomed and ridden by Litha, and when the time came, had accepted her role cheerfully.

Ga'vik had said they would reach a Cenarion settlement within one or two days, presumably at the same, leisurely pace with which they had crossed Un'goro Crater. Litha knew the raptor could travel at speed for hours without tiring – even over the arduous terrain of Tanaris. She pushed hard, urging the fleet reptile with her knees, and they reached Valor's Rest by mid-morning.

When Litha swung down from the raptor, face flushed and panting with exertion and exhilaration, even the dull ache in her leg felt liberating. She was dizzy, and braced herself against Jo's neck as she walked. She could not feel her feet, though she was not sure if it was from the long ride, or the euphoria.

She approached the first night elf she saw.

* * *

Ga'vik glared at Lujin. "And where were you, _night watch_?" The big cat did not even deign to glare back. She was staring intently down the path toward Valor's Rest. She gave a muted meow and resettled the fur along her spine.

"Well, why didn't you fucking _go_ with her, then?" he retorted. This earned him a single, sullen glance.

The human's sleeping skins were cold, which meant she had left hours ago. She had not taken the bedroll, either, which likely meant she didn't intend to spend another night on the ground. Only Jozala, the new saddle, and one water skin were missing. Litha hadn't taken much, really, other than his _mount_. Ga'vik swore lustily and kicked out the fire in frustration, then hopped back, hissing and shaking his burned foot.

He sat for a while, chewing angrily on a bit of jerky and gazing at the scattered coals. He remembered her guarded expression from the night before. From _always_. She was incomprehensible. Why leave now, when he had finally explained his intention to help her gain her freedom? He had not hurt her; he had not _used_ her, even when she had clearly offered herself. The troll mentally flipped through images from the night before, searching his memories of her for a motive. His traitorous mind was eager to conjure everything but her face: the contour of her naked hips outlined in firelight; his own large hand covering the supple mound of her breast; the intricate pink whorls of her scarred thigh.

When he tried harder to picture her face, he saw only wet, red lips, parting open… and wide, green-and-gold-flecked eyes, glimmering with tears, pupils dilated in terror. Ga'vik's stomach churned suddenly and he spat out the remaining bits of tough, dried meat. He stood.

There was no doubt about the direction she was headed. Lujin was still weather-cocked toward the path, muscles bunched and ready to spring down the trail. One ear swivelled back toward him as he moved about the camp, and her tail switched impatiently as she waited.

Silithus was no place to travel without weapons or magic, but Valor's Rest was not far down the path, and the human was unlikely to be harmed by the druids there. As to whether they would help her… Ga'vik was increasingly doubtful. His optimism when he had first come up with the plan had soured as the whole of the universe (_or perhaps, one spiteful loa_) had endeavoured to remind him that _nothing_ went as smoothly as he'd hoped.

Cursing again, the troll began rolling up the sleeping skins and stuffing them hastily into his bags. Without Jozala, his load would be much heavier. Once he'd packed the camp up as best he could, he set off down the trail at a jog, Lujin coursing beside him.

They reached the small group of buildings by dusk. Ga'vik dropped to a crouch at the crest of a hill to rest his legs – they felt like black jelly – and observe the encampment. He saw no sign of the human or the raptor, but several night elves and a couple of tauren were in evidence. When at last he spotted a female tauren strolling along the edge of the graveyard by herself, he moved to intercept her.


	17. 17: Bruim is roped in

_Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right._

_Author's note: Second (or really, third) chapter tonight. Don't say I never did nuthin' for ya._

* * *

Bruim watched curiously as the lanky, black-haired troll approached her. He moved with the rolling, self-assured gait that all male trolls seemed to have perfected by puberty. His leather and mail armour was not showy, but clean and well-kept, and the broad expanse of his shoulders attested to regular use of the bow and full quiver at his back. _A hunter_, Bruim decided, though it took her a moment longer to spot the sleek, felid shape of his pet, sliding through the shadows of the grave markers, nearly invisible in the fading light.

"Greetings, traveler," she hailed him, and he raised a hand in response. As he came closer, Bruim could see that the trollish hunch of his shoulders was more of a sag, and his eyes were lidded and tired. She sensed no danger from the lone hunter, so she raised her hands and cast a swift healing spell on him. She was rewarded with a grateful nod and a groan, and the troll stopped to stretch both arms over his head, spine popping audibly. He was slightly taller than her when he straightened.

"Thank you, I've missed that," he said, in lightly accented Taur-ahe. Confused, Bruim didn't respond immediately. The troll continued, "Are you… Bruim Mistrunner? A friend of Eikahe's?"

Bruim puffed air through her nostrils in surprise. "That is I. Did he send you with a message for me?" She flicked her ears back and forth, perplexed. She hadn't seen Eikahe in many seasons, though she thought of him, still.

"Not exactly," the troll drawled, ruffling one hand through his already messy hair. His shoulders slouched forward again and he clacked his teeth together noisily, apparently lost in thought. When he continued, he didn't quite meet her eyes. "He spoke of you, though. As a friend. He told me I could seek you out if I was ever… well. He said I'd know you by the butterfly on your chest, and your large, uh…"

"Udders," Bruim filled in, smirking. She hadn't thought Eikahe had noticed. Thoughtfully, she ran a hand over her collarbone, though she couldn't feel the silhouette her brown and white fur made there. She was a little vain about the large, butterfly-shaped spot. She was not a particularly beautiful tauren (though undeniably well-endowed in the curves department), but the natural marking made her memorable, even to non-tauren humanoids.

When the troll volunteered nothing more, she asked, "You are also a friend of Eikahe's?"

"I was," he replied, shifting to meet her eyes again. "He's dead," he added. His eyes were very blue, and very expressive. Bruim found herself thinking absently that he was attractive, even as the bluntly delivered news sunk like a rock into her belly.

She stooped slowly to kneel on the earth, lowing mournfully. The troll dropped into a crouch before her, elbows on his knees, long tapered fingers trailing in the dirt. He waited in silence as she collected herself.

"How?" was all she could manage, at first.

He clicked his teeth again before answering. His pet, a black panther, came to stretch beside them on the ground. When she turned her golden eyes on Bruim, they, too, seemed to shine with melancholy.

"We were in Tanaris, on a mission for the fu… uh, goblins," he began. "We found a goblin slave, a female human, in a caravan that had been attacked. She was… anyway, it's a long story, but Eikahe wanted to save her. He was trying to heal her."

When the troll stopped and showed no sign of continuing the story, Bruim prompted him, "How did he die?"

"Trying to _save_ her," the troll said again, his voice rough. He lifted his head to gaze past Bruim, at the graveyard. His expression was fierce, but his eyes were distant. He was silent for a long time. _Not much of a talker_, Bruim thought in exasperation.

"Who killed him?" she asked, plucking at the short fur of her legs to keep from reaching out to give the troll a shake.

Blinking, he turned back to her as if in surprise. "Silithids." He ruffled his hair again, jutting his lower lip up between his tusks in a scowl. "And a… a humanoid silithid. I've never seen one before. They've been attacking goblin caravans up and down the route from Un'Goro Crater to Gadgetzan. I need to get word to my superiors," he added, trailing off.

"Qiraji," Bruim breathed, "There have been escalating attacks here, as well, with almost no survivors. They are gaining strength; testing us. You say the human survived such an attack?" She frowned, trying to remember the story the little human had told the night elves. There had been no mention of silithids, though she had spoken of being captured by a troll; hence the raptor mount.

"Yes," said the troll, "although I haven't really been able to ask her about it. I don't know any Common, and she was out of it for a while. She was burned in the attack. Badly. Eikahe was trying to heal her, but her slave collar prevented healing spells from having much effect."

Bruim huffed and glanced toward the camp. The human had been scarred, and burns would make sense. She had also been wearing a magic-suppression collar, and all the druids had been immediately dubious that it had been put there by a troll. Certainly this _hunter_ was unlikely to have done so.

"Why are you here, troll?" she asked at last, not unkindly. "Did you come to inform me of Eikahe's journey to the Earth Mother?"

"N… no. Or, not only that." The troll glanced at her, and away again quickly. Bruim could tell he was considering lying to her. Compared to the stony, stoic face of a tauren bull, the troll's shifting expressions were as open and revealing as a human's.

_No__,_ she thought generously, _not _quite_ as dramatic as a human__'s__._

"She left," he said finally, "and took my fucking mount." He sat back into his heels and looked at Bruim evenly. He did not elaborate further.

"Why did she leave," she enunciated slowly, "and why are you _here_, in Silithus?"

The troll clicked his teeth and ruffled his hair. "I was trying to get her away from the goblins," he admitted, "It's what Eikahe wanted." The troll looked sidelong at her, as if assessing the effect his words were having. "I brought her across Un'Goro in the hope that you, or one of the other druids, might be able to help her. To free her." _He is being truthful_, decided Bruim, with mild astonishment.

When he did not explain why the human was not with him, Bruim rephrased her question. "And what happened that led to the human leaving?"

The troll looked down and away again, rocking on his heels and clicking his teeth. When he spoke again, his voice was oddly muffled, and his accent slightly thicker. "I scared her, I think. I had to… to kill someone. And I yelled at her, but I never hurt her. She tried to… but I _didn't_, anyway. She's just so…" His sharp teeth flashed in a pained expression. "She's so _human_," he finished, as if that explained everything.

Bruim frowned, considering. "Flighty?" she guessed.

"Fucking _maddening_," snapped the troll, "and unpredictable. She does one thing, but she means another. Or she lies, but expects me to know what she is thinking, or feeling. How can I fucking know, when she seems to be feeling a hundred different, incompatible things at once?! _Loas take her_!" He flung his hands up at the last, his blue eyes flashing with anger.

The druid sat back a little from the seething hunter, watching him carefully. "So you want your mount back?" she guessed, tentatively.

"_No_!" he snarled, looking both startled and ferocious, "I mean, yes, of course. But I need to _find_ her, to make sure she's _okay_. She's somewhere in this loa-damned place, with no fucking magic, no weapons, _nothing_. Fuck." He stopped, breathing hard, then added, "She's very small, with brown hair, and green eyes. Sort of. They're green and brown and gold. Like a forest." After a moment, he held up a hand from his crouched position, possibly to indicate her height.

_Oh, Eikahe,_ thought Bruim, suppressing a wistful laugh. _This troll of yours is dreadfully handsome, noble to a fault, and infatuated with someone he can never have__.__ How like you._

"What was her name?" the tauren asked, stalling. _As if there might be another human slave girl, about yay high, riding a raptor around Silithus, _she thought gloomily.

"Lid'ta." The troll stumbled over the unfamiliar phoneme. He added unnecessarily, "My raptor's name is Jozala. She's red."

Bruim nodded gravely, trying to keep her expression serene as she considered what to tell him. "And what is your name, hunter?"

"Ga'vik." He did not give any additional title or information about his lineage, though this was not unusual for a troll. He was watching her keenly.

Bruim blew through her nostrils and nodded again, slowly, toying with a beaded decoration on the edge of her skirt.

The troll surged abruptly to his feet, anger and relief flitting over his face.

"You've seen her. She's been here. Where is she? Is she okay? Jozala?!" He looked toward the few small buildings, though it was obvious no raptors could be hidden there.

"She is not here, but she was." Bruim was glad she hadn't had to tell him. She could honestly tell Layo that the troll had deduced the truth on his own.

"Where has she gone? Have you freed her?" The last was said with an almost desperate note of hope, but Bruim began to shake her head before he had even finished.

"She did not come to me, or perhaps…" _But probably not_, she admitted to herself. "Regardless, none of us here have the ability to remove that collar. Even Layo Starstrike. You would need… it matters not. Her story was obviously a fabrication, and we rely heavily on the goblins for supplies here, Ga'vik."

The troll ran both hands through his hair in agitation. "Her story…? The goblins… have you returned her to them?"

"Not yet," Bruim said gently. "Layo ordered that she be taken to Commander Mar'alith, in Cenarion Hold. He will decide if she is to be returned to them. The Ficklespraggs may know more, as well – the goblin pair that deals in potions and reagents," she explained.

The tauren watched as Ga'vik wrestled with this information, shifting his weight and clicking his teeth. When he stilled, she knew he had come to a decision. Looking resolute, he adjusted the leather satchels he carried, crooked a finger at his pet, and gave a short nod in Bruim's direction.

"Thank you for the healing spell, and the information, Bruim Mistrunner," he tossed at her, turning toward the path.

"Wait," cried Bruim, getting heavily to her feet. "Surely you cannot intend to travel tonight, by yourself?!" When the troll didn't respond, she continued, "They are mounted – she on your raptor, and the night elves on sabers. There is no way to catch them tonight."

The troll stopped walking, but did not turn.

"It is very dangerous to travel alone in Silithus, now more than ever. They are mounted and well-armed, and will reach Cenarion Hold swiftly and safely, but there is no need for you to hurry, and risk your life. The Commander has grown… distracted, since his wife passed. He will not make a decision quickly. Days – maybe weeks."

Bruim cursed Eikahe silently. _I hope the Earth Mother is scolding you for the mess you left__,_ she thought. _Leaving this troll to complete your impossible quest__…__ and now, forcing me to assist him_.

The tauren approached the troll and gingerly laid a hand on his forearm. "Rest here tonight, hunter. In the morning, I will travel with you to Cenarion Hold, and we will see about this… human."

After a moment, the troll nodded wearily and followed her back into the small encampment. He offloaded a large stash of hides and leather items with a trader before rolling out a sleeping skin beside Bruim's small hut. He declined her invitation to sleep inside the hut, stating flatly that he didn't think it would rain, but readily accepted the food and drink she offered him.

They dined in peaceable silence for a time.

"Did Eikahe speak of me often?" Bruim asked finally, unable to contain the question any longer. The troll gave her a sidelong look.

"I think he regretted the way he left things with you," he said, instead of answering her question. Bruim snorted loudly.

"The way he left things… do you mean when we fought so heatedly, I nearly made him a bullock?"

The troll continued to scowl into his bowl of desert dumplings, but she thought there was a touch of humour in the way his blue eyes crinkled at the edges.

"You would castrate him for becoming celibate? Don't you think that's a bit redundant?"

Bruim snorted again and poked at her food. "He did not become celibate, he simply refused to…" she gestured helplessly, "to do as he ought to do, to be who he was expected to be, to be…"

"Be with you?" suggested Ga'vik.

"Not _only_ that." The tauren cast an irritated look at the troll. She wondered how much he knew about it. Dragging information from him was an excruciating process. She thought hard about her next question.

"Was he… _with_ anyone, while you knew him?"

The troll shrugged and swallowed a mouthful of food before answering. "No, of course not. He was celibate."

"Any particular _friends_ with whom he spent a great deal of time, though?"

"Me, I suppose."

"Any special _interest_, in anyone?" Bruim found she was unable to state the question more directly.

"Me, I suppose," the Ga'vik said again, and turned to her with an odd half-smile. His eyes were rueful as he spoke, "and we would have made a fine couple, too, if we'd been of the same…" he twirled his spoon vaguely, "…faction."

Bruim gave an explosive chuff of surprise, nostrils flared wide and ears pressed flat back, but the troll seemed unmoved by her consternation. He finished his dinner quietly, passed her the bowl, and stood to stretch majestically once more before moving to the bedroll he'd laid out earlier.

"You don't need to come, but if you want to, for Eikahe, I'll be leaving first thing." He began to tug off his armour, forcing Bruim to look away in confusion. "Good night, Bru."

The tauren wrinkled her nose in distaste at the nickname. _At least Eikahe was not entirely alone, but did it have to be a troll?_ she thought_.__ Now we have to go find this deceitful human, and the Qiraji are rising. Sweet Earth Mother, what next?_


End file.
